


unstoppable force // immovable object

by welcome2atlantis



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everyone Has Issues, Gang typical violence, M/M, Mental Health Issues, canon child abuse, gang typical behavior, she li being she li
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 11:21:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25349929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/welcome2atlantis/pseuds/welcome2atlantis
Summary: Mo Guanshan's latest contractual obligation is He Tian, mafia brat and resident pain in the ass. Only, it's less Mo working security, and more Mo playing nanny and trying to out stubborn his client.orBodyguard!Mo suffers through He Tian's antics and accidentally falls for him in the process.
Relationships: He Tian/Mo Guanshan (19 Days), Jian Yi/Zhan Zhengxi (19 Days)
Comments: 100
Kudos: 531





	1. i, ii, iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is your typical slow burn Mafia Bodyguard kinda au. Basically, a play on what would happen if He Tian grew up separate from the boys. They’re all somewhere in their twenties, so their characters are (a little) more mature. Meaning: less weird gay chicken. There are some obvious other differences in the characters dynamics, but overall I tried to stay as true to the original characters as possible.  
> The chapters are in chronological order, but each individual chapter is structured around first a theme, then chronology. So there might be slight time overlap between sections in a single chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who re-read 19 days? This obviously means I must write 10K + words of nonsense about it.

* * *

**i. indomitable will**

He Cheng warns Mo right off the bat that He Tian will do his level best to get him to quit.

"My brother strenuously objects to the idea of a bodyguard. I have charged numerous employees with his care." He Cheng means underlings, but it’s taken Mo all of five second to figure the guy put on airs like most people breathed. "But my brother has used a number of methods to convince them to quit."

The man hulk that stood off to the side makes a derisive noise. He's obviously just as unimpressed with He Cheng's diplomacy. The guy must be pretty important or close to the inner family, because He Cheng ignores it and doesn't order mystery-tattoo-man out of the room or remove any of the guy's limbs but keeps talking instead.

"I think outsourcing is the next logical approach, and both Mister Jian and his youngest son speak very highly of you and your abilities. Mister Jian's respect is not given lightly."

It's given pretty fucking lightly in Mo's humble opinion. All he had to do was keep Jian Yi from being an idiot, which he'd already been doing back in middle school. It just means he gets paid for it nowadays. But if He Cheng wants to think Mo's some super badass guard, he ain't going to say shit. Means a better paycheck for him.

"I have high hopes you'll be able to keep my brother safe, but my real concern is if you'll be able to successfully out last my brother's childish antics."

Mo has put up with clients like that before– trying to duck his guard, throwing insults.

Throwing punches.

A month, maybe two, and his client loses interest. They move on to something more important, something more interesting, something they can win at. It’s not much fun to continually fail at running Mo off.

"I've had my fair share of uncooperative clients Mister He," Mo answers. "If there's one thing I excel at other than security, it's putting up with difficult clients."

Fucking understatement that.

He Cheng looks skeptical, but he moves on to the extensive list of weird obligations involved in working this particular security contract. 

***

"The kids got balls, you have to give him that at least," Qiu says on the drive back to the family’s estate.

"That he does," He Cheng murmurs as he watches the landscape shift from city to over-groomed woodlands. 

"Think he'll be able to do it?"

"God, I hope so." He Cheng sounds tired, which isn't a new thing when it comes to his brother. "I don't know what I'll do if he can't."

***

Dealing with He Tian is a war of attrition. 

The man works to find every angle, seeks out any weakness, searches for available sore spots to exploit. It’s ridiculous how much energy the guy seems to expend on it- some kind of hyperfocus thing.

And all that attention is single-mindedly set on finding all available weapons to wield against Mo.

He Tian’s favorite tactic is inundating Mo with questions. He has never had a conversation without He Tian, bastard that he is, trying to coax personal information out of him. It’s endless, constant, compulsive. There is no escaping them. 

While eating dinner: “Where did you grow up?” – “The fuck do you care?”

At work: “Do you prefer romantic candle lit dinners, or long walks on the beach?” – “I prefer when you shut the hell up.”

In the car: “Why did you get that snake tattoo?” – “What’s it to you?”

In the shower: “Little Mo~ Can I join you?” – “Use your own bathroom you fucking pervert!”

At a work meeting: “How did you get involved with the Mafia?” – “None of your business.”

Picking up girls at some fancy-ass club: “How do you feel about a three way Momo? I’m sure she won’t mind.” – “You’re disgusting.”

On his _day off:_ “Why don’t you ever answer my questions little Mo?” – “Because fuck you, that’s why!”

 _But wait- there's more!_ Invading Mo’s space as much as possible, disrupting him at every available opportunity, awful nicknames, invading his privacy, having a shitty personality, getting handsy, just to name a few other of He Tian’s favorite methods.

Basically, just generally offending Mo with his existence. 

Obviously the guy is trying to run him down until he caves, but He Tian isn’t the only stubborn one. Mo _refuses_ to give him the satisfaction. 

Mo starts to set demands; a trade system of fulfilling He Tian’s wants in exchange for good behavior. It’s one of the few ways he can exert control without toeing the line of violating his contract, and it's his own silent declaration to He Tian that he doesn’t fucking own Mo. That he isn’t going to bow down to some princeling. Mo is here to do his job, and while he might bend to accomplish that he doesn’t -and will not- break.

***

When He Cheng had told Mo to never let his brother do more than use a microwave or a toaster he had thought He Cheng to be over exaggerating. 

Then he witnesses He Tian burn a pot when he tries to heat up _water_.

He Tian is now banned from the kitchen without supervision.

***

"So, what’s your story?" He Tian asks.

For the fourth fucking time this week.

"What's it to you?" Mo shoots back automatically, idly stirring their dinner on the cook top and doing his best to ignore the way He Tian has been staring like a fuck’n creep for who knows how long. Only now He Tian has gone and ruined it by opening his stupid mouth.

"I just wanna get to know you better Momo, is that such a crime?"

Ugh, he hates that nickname. He hates _all_ of the nicknames. 

"I'm security. You don't need to know shit about me."

Mo says it without mercy, because He Tian is too much of an annoying, invasive fucker. He has to be shut down straight off- the blunter, the more aggressive, the better. Mo had tapped into his old defense mechanism of back-talk, the one he'd worked extremely hard to train himself out of once he started taking serious jobs. Client's generally don't like their hired guards to give them attitude (surprise), but now that natural hostility is working in Mo's favor. Still, the guy is only getting pushier by the day and seriously it's starting to test Mo's careful yet tenuous leash on his own temper. 

He never should've taken this job.

"I could just look up your records," He Tian retorts.

Mo snorts, only says; "Good luck with that," because he would bet good money He Tian had already tried getting his dirty, rotten hands on them within three days of meeting him -probably less- and what little of his past records that hadn’t been purged over the years, He Cheng has under lock. He Cheng is more low-key about it, but he's just as much of an asshole as his brother. Genetics probably. Mo minds it less when that asshole-ness is aimed at He Tian though.

In his peripheral vision, Mo catches that predatory shark smile, the one that sets Mo's teeth on edge. It puts the lie to He Tian's bullshit genuine tone when he says, "I think it's reasonable to want to know about my roommate. What if you're a psycho killer? Or a pervert?"

Mo looks up from his cooking to give He Tian his best sneer. "Like your family would let a crazy murder anywhere near their precious son. And if anyone here's a perv, it's your creepy ass."

The bastard looks completely unapologetic from where he's leaning his hip against the island counter, leering at Mo like he's one of those socialite or politicians daughters he's always banging.

"Guilty as charged." 

Fucker and his damn puns.

***

Playing bodyguard to He Tian is nothing like past assignments. For one thing, _he's living with the bastard._

It's legit part of the contact He Cheng had drawn up and had him sign. There'd been plenty of other weird, questionable shit, but that stipulation had almost made Mo walk out right fucking then and there. He regrets not listening to his better judgement, but he'd made a promise, and while Mo isn't worth much, his word is. 

The job has turned out to involve Mo acting more as a glorified nanny to a bratty, spoiled kid –a contrary, perverted, egomaniacal kid with a trust fund– than actually protecting the guy.

So Mo cooks and keeps the place clean; except He Tian's room, no amount of pay is worth that shit. Mo makes sure He Tian gets his lazy ass to meetings, drives him around, and makes sure he takes his vitamins daily (really it's his medication for some mood disorder, but He Tian calls them vitamins and Mo gets being defensive about that sorta thing and doesn't bring it up). 

Mo consoles himself with the reminder that he's making some serious bank. Which only sort of helps.

***

“I want meat stew for dinner tonight,” He Tian says while they’re driving back from some business meeting Mo doesn’t give a shit about. He'd insisted Mo let him drive back to the apartment (it’s not an apartment, it’s a fucking penthouse with a ten million yuan view of the city). Mo lets him, because it means he’ll have leverage the next time He Tian tries to convince Mo he can _totally_ drive home from the club even though he’s blasted out of his everliving skull.

The bastard just expects to get everything he wants. Because _of course_ the world owes He Tian everything, and everyone is expected to bow down and meet his every whim and be grateful he bothered to notice them. Mo isn’t about to bow down to this dick without a fight, but he’s got a job to do. Doesn’t mean he has to do it the way He Tian wants. “Did you take your vitamins today?” Mo shoots back. Bastard will have to fucking earn his meat stew.

“Of course I did mother Mo,” He Tian replies easily.

“All of them?”

“Mmm,” He Tian says; which is not a real answer. He's not stupid enough to take it for a yes, even if he hadn’t already checked this morning and found the last three days worth of He Tian's risperdal stashed away. Even if he hadn’t guessed with how unnaturally energetic the guy has been, more lively but a bit twitchy around the edges.

Mo calls his bluff. “I watch you take the ones I know you’ve been skipping and you get stew, or it’s convenience store crap for the rest of this week." 

“Please little Mo, I lived off convenience store food for five plus years,” He Tian retorts with the goodnatured attitude of someone who is totally on their own bullshit. There's no way He Tian will dain being stuck eating pleb food now and Mo knows it.

“Have fun with your tasteless, freeze dried, preservative whatever.”

“So heartless little Mo.” He Tian says -whines almost- like a kid who’s been denied a sweet.

“Pick, asshole.”

He Tian takes his goddamn meds. 

***

What little guarding he does is more about protecting He Tian from himself.

Not letting him crash the car that’s worth more than Mo will ever see in his lifetime, or burn the building down trying to cook, and just generally trying to reign in the bastard's self-destructive behavior as best he can.

It’s not an easy task, despite Jian Yi's claims that getting Mo to budge on something is like trying to move a mountain. Maybe there's some truth in that, but He Tian is a force of nature that can level mountains, and once he gets going Mo stands a better chance of stopping a typhoon.

So as long as it doesn’t involve He Tian driving a car 150 mph into a wall, wandering into their enemies territory, killing people, getting grievously wounded, or doing _all_ of the drugs, then it’s better to hunker down and plan for damage control.

***

"Mo."

_Poke_

“Momo.” 

_Poke_

“Lil’ Mo.”

_Poke_

“Moooo.”

“Mo boy.”

“Mosie Mosie Momo~”

_Poke poke poke_

He Tian’s boney ass finger is akin to being stabbed with a needle repeatedly and Mo finally breaks.

 _“What! ”_ He Tian takes this as permission to plaster himself against Mo. “Get the fuck off me!” Mo has to yell it over the thumping base of the shitty techno-house-club-whatever music. 

His demand goes ignored. He Tian only pulls him closer, and he smells like fancy-ass whiskey, expensive perfume, and sweat. It’s seriously not a good mix.

“Off you fucker!” He tries to worm his way out of the grip, but He Tian has a surprising firm hold for someone this intoxicated. 

“Come dance with me little Mo,” He Tian croons.

“Like hell! Go back to that skinny little stick girl or the redhead or whatever other woman!” _Or guy,_ Mo silent adds. There have been a couple gay clubs He Tian has patronized since Mo started this job. Honestly, he personally suspects the guy just plays Bi for the sake of his over-sexed playboy image, and the whole thing had felt more like the testing of a possible weapon in their private little war. It might have worked on He Tian’s previous, and more homophobic guards, but has zero impact on Mo. 

He Tian is not discouraged. He just raises the stakes- gratuitous flirting, bold come on's, endless innuendos, and, most horribly, often delivered in public. Like now.

“Dun wanna,” He Tian complains. “They’re boring.” He nestles his face into Mo’s neck like it’s his goddamn right, and he’s doing that thing where he grazes his mouth over the skin in a pretense of a real kiss. “Your ass looks so fucking good in those pants.”

Mo makes a note to burn them the first chance he gets. Preferably in front of He Tian. 

“Wanna dance with you,” He Tian says again, rocking Mo side to side in a drunken approximation of the music’s beat. The guy is probably five seconds away from straight up grinding on him. 

Mo is so done with this shit. It’s starting to be less He Tian being a giant perv, and more like sexual harassment.

He shoves He Tian off him full force. If He Tian hadn’t been shitfaced it wouldn’t have worked, but he is and it sends him staggering back. He almost falls over, but manages to catch himself against the wall.

Mo expects him to be pissed, but He Tian laughs- like the whole thing is just a big fucking joke. It probably is to him, and that just makes Mo fucking furious. “Dun fuck'n touch me!” he screams, and knows he’s losing his temper, but there’s shit all to do about it.

“Don’t be so serious,” He Tian says with a smug grin, levering himself back to standing on his own two feet. 

“Fuck'n perv! Stay tha' fuck away from me!”

He Tian swaggers back over, stopping just close enough to invade Mo’s space but not touch. “Hmm, do I disgust you that much?”

“I hate you more and more every day,” Mo spits out, and he shouldn’t be saying that to a guy he works for/lives with, but...

He Tian just laughs. Grinning mockingly he says, “I don’t want you to like me more and more,” and keeps laughing until he pukes on Mo’s shoes.

***

Without a doubt, He Tian could take over the world if he wanted.

Lucky for the world, He Tian is too lazy to bother. Just the words _responsibility_ and _commitment_ can send He Tian into a coma of uselessness. Ruling the world would be too much work, so everyone is safe from He Tian.

Everyone except Mo.

***

Mo has managed to make He Tian lose his temper a grand total of once. And really, it’s He Tian’s fault for asking in the first place. It's his fault that he keeps pushing every button. Inevitably he finally pushes the wrong button at the wrong time. Mo detonates. 

“You wanna know what I think of you?!” It comes out part scream, part snarl, all rage.

“Please, share your thoughts!” He Tian sounds so fucking smug. Is _always_ so smug.

He’s so _sick of this shit_ , and it feels like someone just injected adren straight into his brain. “I hate people like you the most!” Mo says it like a challenge, the words shooting out of his mouth faster than he can think. “Because under that superficial mask of yours, there’s only a sinister, two-faced piece of shit whose only redeeming quality is his bank account.” 

“And you think you’re better than that?" He Tian’s faces twists into a sneer, his recrimination is heavy with the weight of disdain. "Don’t be so full of yourself. Us sinister shits are the reason you have a decent paycheck.”

“I do what I _need_ to survive. You do what you _want_. You’ll use, buy, steal, and take anything or anyone because you can. Anything to fill that void that’s eating at you. Only no amount of money can buy–” He Tian shoves him into a wall.

Mo shuts up.

He Tian's face is a unblemished mask of apathy, but there’s cold murder in those eyes. Something a little insane.

His voice is perfectly calm when he tells Mo, “You keep talking, and I’ll sew your pretty mouth closed." His gazes fixes on Mo's mouth, and He Tian brushes a thumb over his lips with chilling tenderness. "Stitch by stitch. Understand?” He looks up, meets Mo's eyes with a challenge of his own.

Mo isn’t scared of much, but he’s scared right now. He hates the weakness of it. Hates that it makes him look down and away, tries to hide his shame. Humiliated, he seethes in his resentment. But the bomb of his rage has already gone off, leaving him bone tired, trembling, and with a killer head aching. It's a bad an idea to play with danger when it’s got him by the throat, but Mo still resents giving in.

“Understood.”

***

On bad days, when both of them are at their worst, Mo thinks it's him who needs to be guarded from He Tian.

Maybe just a restraining order. Except that would be awkward, considering they live together. 

***

“Do you have any questions you want to ask me?” 

_Well that’s a new one_ , Mo thinks. Does he have anything he wants to ask He Tian?

Of course he does.

 _Why are you such an ass?_ Is near the top of the list. _Is it because you’re a rich boy who pisses money?_ _Or just your over inflated ego?_

_How can one person be so fucking selfish?_

_Do you even have real friends?_

“What are your thoughts on the things I’ve done?” He Tian prompts, and actually looks serious.

Mo doesn’t understand He Tian at all and it’s annoying how often he catches Mo off guard. Being constantly off balance and on edge is problematic. Maybe, if he can figure the guy out, shit will get simpler.

_Is all the crazy shit you do part of your God Complex? Or are you actually just that desperate to get yourself killed?_

_Do you put yourself in danger hoping I’ll quit? Is the possibility of me getting killed an acceptable risk as long as it gets rid of me?_

_What do you dream about on those nights I wake up to your screaming?_

There are so many things Mo wants to ask.

“I’m not interested in your business,” Mo scoffs. 

And that’s also true. He Tian obviously has serious issues, and Mo wants as little to do with that as possible. 

***

He Tian has not forfeited their contest of wills. He shows no signs of cracking. He hones the weapons he has, picks new tactics to try, and the annoyance factor grows steadily with no end in sight. The man’s resolve is as steadfast as it was day-one, and his interest never seems to waver. In fact, there’s so little to occupy He Tian’s time, he probably sees Mo as his greatest form of entertainment.

At this point, Mo’s knows there's no outlasting this. This isn't something he can win at. All he can do is learn how to survive it. 

* * *

**ii. persistent affection**

Months that feel more like years pass, and Mo’s willing to admit He Cheng has a point about this insane motherfucker. He Tian is unable to do anything halfway. It’s either 150% or absolute zero. 

The things he chooses to put that 150% into usually involve: getting shit faced, getting laid, ignoring any responsibilities, flirting with anyone not in the Family, pissing off He Cheng, and making Mo’s life a misery. 

***

“Lil Mo~ Let’s go out and play~” 

He Tian leaps into his bed, like a small child waking his parents up. 

What the fuck. They’d been out till five in the morning Friday and Saturday night. Where had He Tian gotten the energy for this shit? Of all the days He Tian gets out of bed at a normal fucking hour.

“It’s my day off, scram!” Mo half yells, still groggy and partially asleep.

“Exactly, it’s your day off! Let’s go do something fun!” He Tian starts poking at his cheek, and Mo pulls the covers over his head to escape.

“We aren’t fucking friends He,” Mo gripes. “You are literally a contractual obligation. Six days a week, for twenty four hours a day I have to put up with you. But today is not one of them, so get the fuck out!”

Mo’s phone started ringing.

Jesus christ, Mo can not catch a break. 

Mo feels He Tian get off the bed, and he relaxes under his warm, soft blankets. Until he hears the ringing stop and, “Hello, Mo Guanshan’s phone, this is–”

“Motherfucker!” 

Mo launches himself out of bed, blankets and all. Manages to tackle He Tian to the floor and his phone goes flying out of He Tian’s hand and skittering across the hardwood floor. He scrambles to pick it up, manages to grab it just as He Tian grabs _him_ around the waist. 

“Get your hands off me,” Mo hisses, checking to see who the call is from. “Jian fucking Yi,” he growls into the phones, trying to dislodge He Tian with his free hand. “I swear to god, if this call isn’t important–”

“Redhead!” Jian greets him in the absurdly cheerful way only he can manage. “I’ve missed you so much!”

“Why are you bothering me shit head? It’s ass o'clock in the morning." It's actually more like ten, but Jian Yi is just as bad about sleeping in as his current client. "Why the fuck are you even awake?”

“So rude! I just wanted to hear your grumpy, pretty voice!” 

“Why the hell do I put up with you,” Mo grumbles rebelliously while shoving at He Tian face, trying to dislodge him, but the bastard _licks his hand_ – _fucking yuck!_

Jian Yi is oblivious to his struggles; probably for the best. Mo doesn’t need to give Jian Yi extra ammunition for teasing.

“Because I’m a lovely and generous person,” his friend says confidently. “Who loves you despite your shitty attitude, grumpy face, and general hostility.”

Oh boy, another person who wants something from him. Today is going to be awesome.

“Jian, I’m not in the mood!” ( _I am imprisoned by my own client_ , Mo doesn’t say, _and I am only capable of dealing with one large infant at a time!)_

“You never are, and all I want is to hang out with you, is that so much to ask?” Jian Yi whines piteously, but after years of this shit Mo is immune. Unfortunately, after years of Mo's shit Jian Yi is also immune. “It's your day off, right? I haven’t seen you since you took the new job! I wanna hear all~ about it!”

“Hang out with Zhan Xi," Mo complains. "That’s what you did half the time I worked for you anyways!” 

He Tian perks up from where Mo is trying to smother him with the blanket. Oh shit, he just let something slip. Fuck shit. God damn.

“I can’t, Xixi is…” Jian Yi trails off and suddenly Mo’s entire attention is on this conversation, because _can’t find the words_ and Jian Yi are not compatible concepts.

“Did something happen?” Mo asks, keeping his voice gruff and trying not to let any of his rising panic show through. “Is he…” Mo hesitates on what to say next. 

“Zhan Xixi’s fine,” Jian Yi still sounds morose though. “Or, well, he’s not hurt or missing.”

Mo frowns, “Then what’s the problem.” Another horrible thought strikes him. “Did you two… break up?”

“What!” Jian Yi screeches and Mo has to pull his ear away from the phone so he doesn’t go deft. “No!”

Okay, now Mo’s getting annoyed. “Fucking say it Jian or I’m hanging up!”

Jian Yi’s quiet for a few seconds, and Mo’s just about to say fuck it when he speaks, “It’s the first week of a new school year.”

Oh. Right, that.

“So he’s not talking to you today.”

“For two whole days Red!” Jian Yi whines some more, then says more quietly, “It’s not my fault. It’s not like I wanted to vanish into thin air. It was too dangerous to talk with him, I couldn’t let him or his family get involved. I’ve told him so many times but he’s still...” a sigh crackles through in a burst of static. “I can’t stand seeing him hurt like that because of me. Why can't he be like you and just break my nose and forgive me?” 

“Cause he's not a violent asshole, and because Zhan Xi's emotional range consists of more than, quote, 'confused anger, pissed of irritation, and grudging tolerance' un-quote."

Jian Yi doesn't laugh. Mo can hear him sniffling. He’s probably all snotty and gross. The guy is the ugliest crier Mo’s ever seen.

Damn, Jian Yi's serious then. Mo never knows what to say about this. Not to Jian. Not Zhan. Mo carries his own unspoken guilt of leaving too, even if he didn’t just straight up disappear off the face of the earth. Zheng Xi never blames Mo for the gap that steadily grew between them, but still.

Mo sighs and resigns himself to pulling a fourth emotion out of his ass.

"Zhan Xi's not stupid, he knows you’re not to blame idiot," Mo points out. "But you can’t logic your way out of feelings. Not even Zhan is that good. Five years of not knowing if you were dead or alive? Shit, it was hard enough to deal with for the rest of us, I can’t imagine how much harder it was for him.” 

That’s sort of a lie. In a moment of extreme melancholy Zhan Xi told Mo he couldn’t remember a time when Jian Yi wasn’t a part of his life, that it was like he was missing a limb. Or maybe his heart.

Mo absolutely does not tell Jian Yi that.

“Yah, it wasn’t your fault and obviously you never woulda done it if you’d had a choice,” Mo says instead. “No one with a lick of sense could blame you for that shit, especially Zhan Xi, but I don’t think you realize how–” Important you are? Special? Irreplaceable? “–how big a gap your presence left.”

“You know Red,” Jian Yi finally says, still sounding weepy but less like he’s gonna burst out into another round of tears. “You really are a good boy.”

“Gross, don’t say that shit,” Mo complains and that gets a laugh out of Jian Yi for whatever reason. “The fuck are you laughing at asshole?”

“You’re so predictable Mo. Such a Tsun.”

Mo has no idea what that means, but he knows that if Jian’s back to teasing him then Mo is done here. “Can I hang up now? I gotta take a piss.”

“So crass,” Jian Yi chides, like he isn’t worse than Mo. At least Mo has never come out of the bathroom and announced his butthole hurt because he'd taken a massive dump.

“Will you still hang out with me today?” Jian asks.

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” Mo grumbles. “I’ll text you in a bit. Now kindly fuck off.”

“Bye bye redhead!” 

“Scram.” Mo ends the call.

During that conversation, probably around the time Mo'd had a mild freak out about Zhan Zhengxi’s wellbeing, he had forgotten that He Tian has him wrapped up like a boa constrictor. How the hell he’d managed to forget that– 

Okay, yeah. Mo isn't all that surprised. He lost a lot of self awareness when panic got its hooks into him. 

“Why the fuck are you still here!”

He Tian peaks up at him, grins. “Jian Yi’s right Momo, you are a good boy.”

Mo firmly reminds himself that murder is illegal, that he made a promise, that he has an iron bound contract, and that he didn’t want the entire countries mafia after him. Or, worst of all, He Cheng. 

Mo still really really really wants to violently kill this man. 

***

Mister Jian never stood a chance at stopping his son. 

This is the guy whose reaction to Mo trying to fight him was to befriend him. The guy who stood up for and defended Xiao Hui even though she was in love with Zhan Xi too. A guy who had tried to pick a fight with She Li, would have succeeded too, if Mo hadn’t intervened. 

Not even God himself could keep Jian Yi away from the people he cares about. It didn’t matter how many years passed, he would pop out of a hole and abduct you back into friendship.

Mo never stood a chance either. 

***

“Redhead!” Jian Yi immediately pulls Mo into a one armed hug and ruffles his hair. Mo stiffly endures it. He just counts himself lucky the guy has stopped trying to initiate hugs by jump-tackling people.

“Yeah, yeah, good to see ya, now get off me fucko."

Jian Yi beams at him. Fucking beams. Like he wasn’t crying on the phone a few hours ago, or that seeing Mo is somehow the highlight of his week.

Then Jian Yi pauses, blinks, and smiles. “He Tian! It’s been a while since I’ve seen you outside Family gatherings. Was that really you answering Mo’s phone this morning?” Then he narrows his eyes. “Why were you in his room, huh?”

He Tian is smirking, looking like a cat who got the cream, and winks. 

_Oh fuck me_ , Mo thinks, face on fire. This was a terrible idea. He should have never let these two meet. 

Jian Yi gasps, hands covering his mouth in feigned shock. “You’re a beast!”

“Nothing happened!” Mo hisses through gritted teeth.

“It’s okay Red, you can tell me– is evil Tian bullying you? Do I need to fit you for a chastity belt?"

“I’m leaving.” Mo says bluntly, turning away, but He Tian is, of course, ready and waiting. Hooking an arm over Mo's shoulder, He Tian reels him back in. “It’s my fucking day off,” Mo complains aggressively, struggling to escape He Tian’s death grip ineffectually. “This is the one day a week I don’t have to deal with Family shit.”

“Well, it looks like He Tian doesn’t try to ditch you.” Jian Yi consoles brightly. 

“Of course he tries!” Mo says hotly. “But he’s nowhere near as bad as you."

 _And I'm pretty sure He Tian realizes his constant presence annoys me ten times more,_ Mo think viciously.

“I think you meant to say he’s not as _good_ at it as me,” Jian Yi sasses back. "My ability of ditching is practically an art form Red!"

Actually, now that Mo is thinking about it… 

“Jian Yi,” he says slowly, “Where’s your guard?”

The sunny smile Jian Yi flashes. Mo groans.

“He’s around here somewhere,” Jian Yi sing-songs, twiddling his thumbs. 

“Jesus, I never shoulda switched clients. Now I have to worry about you **and** deal with this piece of shit!” Mo jerks his thumb in his clients direction. 

“Momo, so hurtful,” He Tian says, hand pressed to his non-existent heart. 

Jian Yi brightens. “Momo,” he chirps. _Oh God_ , Mo thinks, _kill me now_. “That’s such a cute nickname!"

“Do not,” Mo warns, but that's pointless, so he sticks to his old topic. “Who’s your new guard? I’m gonna kick their ass up between their ears.”

“Uhhh, I don’t think that’d go so well for you,” Jian Yi says. “I mean, brother Qiu might not have your sneaky detective skills, but he’s ripped.”

“Oh shit, you got stuck with a-Qiu? My sincere sympathies,” He Tian says with a grimace. It’s the closest Mo’s ever seen the man get to caring about anyone other than himself. “That guy is such a hard ass.”

“Was he your old bodyguard?”

“Qiu? Hell no. He’s my brothers second hand, I basically grew up with the guy. He's like my weird uncle who rues the day I was born. You think he’d agree to babysit me after watching the hell I put He Cheng through?”

Jian Yi nods sagely. “Big mood.”

“Who the fuck is this Qiu person?” Mo demands.

“Brother Qiu is a man that is half good and half evil.” Jian Yi says solemnly.

“That is absolutely not helpful.” Mo lowers himself to asking He Tian this time. “Who is brother Qiu?”

“That’d be me.”

Mo turns to see a very large, very intimidating, and, yes, very buff man. A man Mo also recognizes. 

“You’re He Cheng's man-hulk,” Mo says before he can think better of it. 

Qiu’s face doesn’t change, but when He Tian and Jian Yi start laughing hysterically Mo can feel the waves of exasperation and disdain rolling off him. Mo is instantly cautious. This is not the kind of person who’s bad side Mo wants to be on. That shit's just science. 

Qiu waits for the laughter to quiet down to grunt at Jian Yi, “Time to go kid.”

“No way, I just got here!” he complains.

Are all mafia kids whiny adult babies? Or just the ones Mo knows? Probably all of them, because Qiu seems just as unaffected as Mo by Jian Yi’s bullshit. “I told you, if you pulled another stunt I wouldn’t take it well.”

“It’s fine, it’s not like I don’t have someone to guard me!” Jian Yi protests. “I’m with redhead after all! He can totally protect me and little Tian too.” He Tian swats Jian Yi on the back of the head. 

“Do not get me involved with this,” Mo retorts. “It is my day off and I am already not getting paid to deal with this asshole,” he points accusingly at He Tian, who pretends to preen under the attention. “I ain’t covering for either of you.”

“Redhead! So mean! I thought you were my friend!”

“Because I literally can not get rid of you. You are a fungus that just keeps growing back.”

“Rude!”

***

Jian Yi is not a fungus growing all over Mo’s life. 

He _is_ a dramatic idiot who’s prone to accidents and free of common sense. He’s a whiny, clingy, man-child and that’s why when they first meet Mo starts a fight with him.

He’s also the most selfless, big-hearted, good-natured, and loyal person Mo has ever met. And that’s why, when Jian Yi walks back into his life after five years of absence, Mo instantly forgives Jian Yi– right after he punches him in the face. 

Mo owes Jian Yi a debt of gratitude twice over. He’ll never truly be able to repay the man for everything he's done for Mo, but Mo will sure as hell try.

***

He Tian manages to keep his opinions/questions/comments to himself for twenty four hours. This isn’t out of kindness, but because he knows that being stuck coming back from work in rush hour traffic means Mo is at his mercy.

“You and Jian Yi seem close.”

Mo shrugs. “Like I said, he’s a fungus.”

“Did Jian Yi ever tell you how we met?” No, he hadn’t, but He Tian didn’t wait for Mo’s answer. “My brother introduced him to me when we were around fifteen or sixteen. I think he and Mister Jian hoped having someone around his age would help him adjust, but Jian Yi wasn’t too fond of me in the beginning.”

Mo checks his mirrors to merge lanes and he catches He Tian smiling in it's reflection. A wicked and affectionate thing, a combination only He Tian could manage. It’s not even an act, He Tian couldn’t have known Mo would catch it’s momentary flicker across a hard mouth. 

“Wonder why that would be,” Mo mutters, sotto voce.

“Like all the finest things in life Momo, I am an acquired taste. Jian Yi acquired a taste.” Mo doesn’t have to see it to know that He Tian’s smirking now. 

“Please tell me that doesn’t mean what I think it means."

“I don’t know little Mo, what do you think it means?” Mo gives the man a quick, unimpressed look before turning his eyes to the road again. 

Being the hopeless romantic sort, Jian Yi would never settle for anything less than his soulmate. And since Jian Yi has been in love with Zhan Xi since the beginning of time, Mo ain’t buying what He Tian’s selling. 

“Gross," Mo complains. "I can’t believe he became your friend. I know Jian Yi could make friends with a rock if he tried hard enough, but still.” 

“He talked a lot about his old life a lot.” He Tian says it casually, like he’s making idle conversation. “Two people in particular.”

 _Motherfucker,_ Mo thinks. _God dammit Jian Yi, you and your gaping hole of a mouth._ Out loud he says, “The fuck do I care?”

“Maybe you know the two recurring characters," He Tina insists, oozing innocence. "Red and Xixi, also known as tsun butthead and Xixi of life’s greatest importance. Depending on what mood Jian Yi is in. ”

Mo has two options. 1) he keeps obfuscating for as long as possible, or 2) he bites the bullet.

...traffic looks really bad. Mo relents, “Fine! Yes, we went to middle school together. Wooo-fuck’n-hoo.”

“I should’ve guessed earlier. Who else would get into a school yard brawl with Jian Yi and somehow end up his best friend,” He Tian sounds delighted. Ugh, this man is way too happy about this. As if hearing a few of Jian’s tall tales actually means he knows shit about Mo. 

“Shut up, I’m not his best friend.”

“Right, how did he put it? Ah yes– you are his best friend that he doesn’t want to bone.” 

Yeah, that sounds like Jian Yi.

“So you grew up in Hangzhou together,” He Tian continues. “I know Jian was a High Street kid, and from what I've gathered Zhan Zhengxi was from Midtown. You though…" He trails off, waiting for Mo to fill in the unspoken blank, as if He Tian couldn’t already tell.

Mo scoffs, "Like I don't have Lower City written across my forehead,"

"I didn't want to assume," He Tian says easily. “You don’t have the accent, unless you're mad. Then you start dropping -ing’s and contracting words all over the place.”

Mo rolls his eyes. He Tian is such a pretentious motherfucker, picking apart the linguistic nuances of street slang. 

“It’s cute though, the three of you together,” He Tian adds. “Like a matched set.” 

Mo expects He Tian to pry more, but the man doesn’t. Instead, he spends the rest of the trip smirking to himself in self-satisfied silence. Mo should be relieved, but he’s not. Jian Yi has undoubtedly told He Tian other things. What though? Mo doesn’t know, and He Tian is absolutely doing this on purpose, knowing the uncertainty will drive Mo mad.

* * *

**iii. collateral damage**

The thing that’s most likely to get Mo killed is his inability to turn down a challenge. 

It’s a knee jerk reaction that has gotten him into so much shit over the years. But having spent his life being stepped on, used, discarded, overlooked– all Mo has ever had to combat this shit is his stubborn refusal to give way without a fight. Doesn’t matter if he doesn’t stand a chance or if it’s twenty to one odds, Mo will stand his ground even if it kills him.

***

“You’re not going to Diablo,” Mo persists, and he has to work hard to keep from screaming it at his client.

“I checked your contract,” He Tian says blithely, leaning casually against his bedroom’s door frame and his hands in the pockets of his no doubt hideously expensive slacks. He’s wearing a horrendous silk shirt that only serves to offend Mo more. “Any place in neutral territory is permissible, therefore I can go.”

“It’s run by the fucking Cartel!” Mo’s yelling now. Perhaps the greater volume will permeate the man’s thick skull. “That ain’t fucking neutral!”

“Contract says territory. Not business, not property, not establishment.”

“You can’t just fucking rules-lawyer your way out of this, you shithead!”

“I already have,” He Tian states plainly, smug like he’s already won this round.

Fuck that shit. “Not if I call your dickhead brother you won’t!”

“I’m sure my brother would love to know you call him that. Besides, my brother’s out of the country on business, remember?”

Mo hasn’t been sent the number for this trip's burner phone yet, and He Tian would know his brother wouldn’t text Mo the number until he was on location. The motherfuck planned for this with 150%. 

Mo isn’t going to be able to win this, but he can at least pull a tie. “Fine, but one condition, you wear protective gear.”

“No way, it makes me look fat,” He Tian says with mock horror. 

“This is non negotiable,” Mo grates out. “Diablo is within four blocks of official Cartel land. You wear the gear or you ain’t pop’n shit.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“Don’t test me He. I can, and will, call brother Qiu.”

Translation: Qiu uses his superior height, weight, and muscle mass to lay down the law. Probably by kicking He Tian ass into the next dimension before locking him in a fucking bunker somewhere until He Cheng gets back from his trip. Qiu will snitch to He Cheng, who will call their father and _shit will get real_.

It would make Mo look bad and be fucking embarrassing to resort to, but so would He Tian getting killed or kidnapped. Better of two shitty options and all that. 

***

Mo would kill to go one weekend without having to step foot in a club. This is, of course, impossible, because He Tian knows how much he hates those places. 

***

It becomes immediately obvious to Mo just as the valet pulls away with the car and Mo sizes him one more time before they get to the entrance.

“ **Where the fuck is your gear**!” he snarls, stopping He Tian and forcing him to face Mo. “You were just fucking wearing it!”

“It wasn’t comfy,” He Tian says. “So I took it off in the car.” He’s got his hands in his pockets, all casual and shit, without a care. He’s smirking down at Mo with vindictive pleasure too.

Mo is furious. He is literally trying to keep this ungrateful piece of shit alive, but it’s fucking impossible if this guy continues to flagrant flaunt himself around an enemy club. Mo is starting to think He Tian has an honest to god death wish. Except, no– He Tian is too self-absorbed for that. He must have some God Complex then.

It’s cold as balls, but the potent rage simmering just under his skin contravenes it as Mo shrugs out of his jacket and strips his shirt off. He can see He Tian eyeing him, part leer, part evaluation. “Not that I mind the show, because I am always down for that, but why are you stripping outside a club in the middle of winter?”

Mo unstraps his bullet proof vest, takes it off, and holds it out wordlessly.

He Tian raises a perfectly arched brow, Mo shoves the vest into He Tian’s chest.

“I’m not wearing this,” He Tian says as he inspects the gear.

“You’ll wear it and you’ll like it.”

“I really don’t think I will.”

“I will kick your ass up and down the block 'til candy comes out and you wind up in the hospital. When your brother asks why I bashed his precious baby brother I'll tell 'im exactly what you did. He’ll fuck'n thank me for it too, cus you might come out extra brain broke, but least ways you’ll be fuck'n alive 'n not sliced to pieces, dumped inna fuck'n river, an' your head won’t be mailed to 'is door step.”

Mo tries to regain some composure, because that was a hell of a rage-blackout induced rant. He makes sure he drops the lower city talk and enunciates clearly, “Put. It. On.”

He Tian is assessing him, like he’s an oddity that’s popped up in his calculations, and not like Mo had threatened to put him in the hospital. “You agree to dance with me for three songs and I’ll put it on.”

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. Why does Mo even bother?!

“You put it on and it stays on until I fucking say so, and you get one song.”

“Three songs and I’ll keep the groping to a minimum,” He Tian retorts. 

“And the gear stays on– _properly_.” Mo reiterates. 

“Deal.”

***

One of the arguments Jian Yi uses to persuade Mo into taking the job is a story of He Tian driving his car head long into a wall at high speed. 

The official report cited texting while driving drunk, Jian Yi tells him, but, on a whim, Mo had dug into the records a little deeper. He Tian’s tox screen showed no alcohol in his system. He Tian didn’t have his phone in the car with him. 

The longer Mo’s around, the more he understands what Jian Yi was really saying, why Jian Yi was so insistent Mo take the job. 

Because the thing that’s most likely to get He Tian killed is himself. 

***

He Tian doesn’t call on the favor immediately. Instead, Mo stays stuck off to the side keeping watch while He Tian's sucking face with some lady that looks way too classy for this shithole.

Mo’s nervous and edgy, and not all of it has to do with being in a Cartel club. The waiting is getting to him. The not knowing. Something about this situation is bad news, and Mo can’t tell if the bad news is He Tian and his relentless advances, or if it'll be the taste of tension in the air breaking into violence. Mo can’t fight or flee because it’s not even happening yet. It’s a slow, drawn out anxiety attack. The only thing he can anticipate is that, at some point, he’ll have to deal with He Tian pressing himself up against Mo. 

It’s not the worst thing he’s let a client get away with –doesn’t make top ten if Mo’s being honest– but He Tian is crafty. God knows what kind of crap he’ll try and pull while he’s got Mo in his clutches. Yet Mo’s biggest problem will be trying to stay alert for threats while simultaneously keeping He Tian from pawing at him. Mo might hate this bastard, but he is also not oblivious to the fact that He Tian is dangerously gorgeous and Mo is very gay. So while his brain screams that He Tian is bad news incarnate, his lizard brain is very happy to get distracted.

Finally He Tian pulls him onto the dance floor. Mo doesn’t really do dancing, and the music is trash, but it doesn’t matter much. This close up, Mo can see how He Tian’s pupils are swallowed up by his irises, fucked up on some club drug. Ecstasy probably, given the man’s got a serious hard on going. Weirdly, he seems content with just swaying back and forth with Mo, occasionally playing grabby-hands with Mo’s ass, but it’s so tame in comparison to what he had expected. 

Mo think they're part way through third and finally song (it's hard to tell with the music seamlessly moving from one into the next), and there’s a dark anticipation shivering across his skin. Only a small part of it is because he’s trapped against a very attractive man, with a very hard dick, and very little impulse control.

It’s when He Tian leans down and starts mouthing at his neck that shit hits the fan. Not because this stupid fucker is giving him a hickey in the middle of some shitty club, but the blinding flash of light on metal. Not the glint of gold and silver catching the light. He pinpoints the incoming hostile- One man with a knife. Mo can handle that.

He waits until the last second, then uses He Tian’s intoxication to swing the man off to the side, out of range, and puts himself in the path of the oncoming knife.

The man had been aiming for He Tian’s gut, so he catches Mo in the back and the blade sinks between his lower ribs. Mo grunts, hears the man curse. Feels him try to pull the blade back and have a second go of it, instead of doing the smart thing and run for it, but the angle’s bad and the blade catches on bone. Mo’s already sweeping the man’s legs out from under him before he can do more than give a few ineffectual yanks, falling to the ground, knife no longer in hand.

Taking the blade out would be real dumb. He’d exsanguinate all over the cheap floor. Fighting with a knife stuck between his ribs is also real fucking stupid, because he could puncture a lung and bleed into that instead. 

Mo’s on top of the guy in less than a heartbeat, knife still jammed in, because internal bleeding is less messy. 

The guy struggles uselessly as Mo gets him pinned, the air knocked out of his lungs, and Mo’s got all his body weight on the man’s windpipe. He just has to wait until the guy’s unconscious and then he can get He Tian the hell outta here. Only there’s another man too, and this one had stayed out of sight. A rusher, to come in and save the first guys ass if things went tits up. 

Mo doesn’t see coming, and the second hostile’s kick sends him crashing off his buddy. The man gets Mo on his stomach so he can twist the blade in deeper, pull it back until it catches bone again, thrust it in again. A few more rounds of that and yeah, one of his lungs is punctured now and the man's weight is squeezing the oxygen from his lungs, blood leaking in to take the space. Mo is seriously fucked, he just hopes He Tian did the smart thing and got the fuck out.

Suddenly the weight is gone, and he can hear the smack of fists on flesh and the shouts of those around them. Somebody, or multiple somebodies, is screaming and the awful music is gone now Mo realizes. 

With an effort that sends agony jolting to every single nerve ending, Mo manges to roll himself enough to see who’s fighting.

It’s He Tian, and he’s beating the _everloving shit_ outta the guy who’d taken Mo unaware. 

With another significant effort that almost makes him black out, Mo checks on the first guy. Someone, probably He Tian, had slit his throat – _where the fuck had he been hiding a knife?_ That's one less problem at least. 

“He Tian,” Mo garbles out, goes unheard, and as loud as he can manage through a collapsing lung, “He Tian.” 

That gets his attention. He Tian whips around and stares at Mo like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. It might be true, depending on what he's high on. It's kinda funny if Mo thinks about it.

Mo blinks and suddenly He Tian’s in his face again and his _everything_ hurts, but it's also a distant sensation. Oh, the sudden increase in pain and proximity is probably because He Tian scrapped him up off the floor. 

He Tian’s doing the staring thing, eyes are still extremely dilated, and Mo lets himself appreciate their color because he can’t really move all that much anyways. Normally they’re a slate grey– hard and unforgiving and about as empathetic as actually slate rocks. Right now they’re kind of… stormy? Like maybe he’ll develop the ability to shoot lighting from his eyes. 

Mo thinks they’re moving, but he’s not really sure. His mouth tastes like copper. He knows he should be screaming around the pain crashing his nervous system, but it's dull and Mo feels nauseous more than anything.

“Think ’m in shock,” Mo manages to say around whatever has congealed in his throat. 

He Tian makes this sharp, high noise in his throat.

“Dun laugh,” Mo says, wishing he could sound properly annoyed, but that's too much work right now.

“Mo, something’s wrong with your lungs, you need–”

“Yea, knife– pop like a balloon.” Wait, did that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, it totally did.

“Mo Guan Shan, shut up and focus on not dying instead. You can insult me all you want then.”

That actually sounds like a sweet deal– in Mo’s favors for once. It’s not too long before he passes out again anyways.

***

He Tian’s puts 150% effort into his harassment, but Mo’s starting to see that his own refusal to surrender drives He Tian a little crazy, actually makes him something close to cautious around Mo- and ain’t that something.

Mo can definitely work with this. 

***

He Tian’s there when Mo wakes up. He’s slumped in a hospital chair next to the bed, glowering at his phone, and the screen throws into stark relief how the dark bags under his eyes have bags of their own. There’s a nice sunrise of a bruise blooming on one cheekbone and his lip is split.

He looks like shit.

“You look like shit,” Mo croaks out. His throat feels like a desert, but Mo got knifed for this dipshit and he deserves the chance to bring He Tian down a few notches.

He Tian drops his phone on the floor, and there’s suddenly a paper cup being shoved at him. Mo blinks, takes the cup, and downs the water in one go. It’s sinfully good, washes away the metal tang and paper dry crustiness, soothing and cool. He Tian brings him another cup, and waits for Mo to finish that one too before he finally speaks.

“So, Mo, I have to ask. Why would you put yourself between me and a blade, knowing full well that I was wearing your gear and all that was between you and the knife was two layers of clothes?"

Mo gives him an _are-you-fucking-kidding-me_ face. This is He Tian's fault –150% of it– and if someone gets to be a dick in this situation, it’s Mo.

“‘M not actually yer nanny." Talking feels like he's got a mouth full of cotton balls. "Protect’n you ’s _literally_ my job.”

“So you just decided to let someone stab you instead of letting the vest take the brunt of the attack.”

“Armour ain’t foolproof. If th' blade was poison ‘n got through ‘n scraped you, you’ be super dead.”

He Tian seems… frustrated? It’s kinda hard to tell. He Tian’s doing that forced bland voice-face thing, and that’s difficult to read on a normal day, made more difficult with how everything feels soft, hazy around the edges– like... floaty clouds and fluffy blankets. 

“‘M on the good drugs, ain’t I?” 

“Yes, because you got stabbed. Repeatedly.”

Mo frowns. “M pretty sure it was once, but like, a lotta times in the once.”

This time Mo can tell He Tian is exasperated. “You had a very large, gaping hole in your back, two of your ribs are chipped, and your right lung was punctured in multiple places. Does that satisfactorily meet your standards for accuracy?”

Mo rolls his eyes. “Ju’ always gotta be a dick ‘bout everything dontcha? ‘M in the hospital, be nice fo’ once.”

“You’re in the hospital because you thought getting stabbed was a good idea.”

“Quit nag’n, fuck. Yer nah’t my mom.” It’s not like Mo wanted to get stabbed either, he wasn’t the one who had purposely ditched his gear. Which reminds Mo of something. He points emphatically at his asshole client. “If I di'nt give you my swag, you wouldn’t’ve been dance’n with me, an’ that fucknut woulda wacked ya a’for I was there.”

He Tian stares at him. He does that a lot, just watches Mo for no reason Mo can fathom. It’s seriously annoying. He sees Mo every goddamn day, what the fuck is so interesting?

“Tha fuck you look’n at?” Mo asks once the weight of He Tian’s eyes gets too uncomfortable.

“Are you going to quit now?”

Mo should. He really should. But he promised– and maybe there’s a part of Mo that takes satisfaction in being the immovable object standing in the path of He Tian’s unstoppable force.

“Nah.”

He Tian makes this face. It’s a jumbled up mess of emotions, and Mo’s not with it enough to pick it apart. He can appreciate that it looks fucking hilarious anyways.

"I put you and myself in life threatening danger,” He Tian says carefully, like Mo has somehow forgotten the reason he was in the stupid hospital. “If I'd gotten killed pulling that stunt, people probably would have felt sorry for you instead of angry. Sure, you'd never get a job with the He's again out of principle, but still. I have done everything in the book to make you hate me."

"Yah, I fuck'n noticed. 'n I do hate you. Fuck’n entitled, fake-ass piece a shit." He Tian doesn’t get mad at Mo for calling him out this time. There’s only a pause, and then He Tian asks, "Why?"

"I made a promise. I’mma do this fuck'n right."

"Just because of a promise?"

"Yah, the fuck ‘s it to you?"

He Tian does more of the creepy-watching thing before he finally stands. Mo realizes that he’s still in that heinous silk button-up he wore to the club, only now it’s got some blood splatters. Huh, guess the guy hadn’t stopped at home to change before heading over. 

He Tian comes over to the bed, and he’s not all blandly serious or making that weird face anymore. 

Smiling wickedly, he gives Mo’s earlobe a tug. 

Mo slaps his hand away. “Fuck off!”

“Already so spirited.” He Tian says, still smiling like a total asshole. “No surprise that getting stabbed wouldn’t keep you down for long.”

Mo scoffs, “I ain’t a wimp.”

He Tian picks up the jacket draped over the back of the chair he’d been sitting in and heads for the door. He stops for a moment to look back at Mo and taunts, “I’m leaving, better get one last good look.”

Mo flips him off. 

***

It's no surprise when Jian Yi comes to visit with Zhan Xi and some unfamiliar guard who waits outside the door. 

Jian Yi immediately throws himself dramatically onto Mo's bed, crying big alligator tears, and hugging him. Zhan Xi peels Jian Yi off him –bless the man– and rebukes his idiot boyfriend for jumping on the injured. Jian Yi tells him He Tian is under brother Qiu enforced house arrest until Mo's cleared for duty. He didn’t have to thought, because He Tian calls Mo every day to complain about it.

Mo can never escape this man.

***

Mo is very much a surprise when He Cheng comes to visit the day before his release from the purgatory of hospital confinement.

Apparently the weird prolonged staring thing is also genetic, because Mo has to sit with agitated nerves under He Cheng’s clinical gaze while he waits for He Cheng to chew him out for putting his precious brother in danger. Only the He's have never once done the expected.

"I want to thank you for what you did.”

All Mo can think to say to such a ridiculous statement is, "You don't have to thank me for doing my job."

"No, but I do feel the need to thank you for doing everything in your power, despite the intentional risk my brother had planned for you, to keep him safe from both our enemies and safe from himself,” He Cheng says in an impressive monotone. “I'm certain he's done everything possible to make you hate him, and you still gave him your protective gear. Then you took a knife intended for him anyways."

Okay, Mo is getting increasingly uncomfortable. He almost wishes He Cheng were mad instead, because at least Mo knows how to react to anger. Gratitude? Not so much.

"You don't have to thank me for doing my job," Mo repeats. 

"The facts still remain. Your performance in… tempering my brother's innate proclivities has already exceeded expectations, and now you have gone above the expectation of your duty. There are precious few people out there that would do as you have."

What the fuck even is this? All Mo did was his goddamn job. Getting He Tian to take his vitamins and go to meetings has been more of a pain than literally getting stabbed! At least Mo is used to that kind of thing!

He Cheng leans forward, braces his elbows on his knees. "My brother is too proud to thank you, and too proud to apologize. But just know that he –and I– are in your debt. If there is something you wish –money, a favor– you need only ask."

"All I did was my job," Mo tries to stress this point. Maybe He Cheng will get it this time.

He Cheng does not get it. He just raises a perfect brow –does he get those things professionally done?– and leans back in the chair to do more of the staring.

To Mo's horror, He Cheng -the human iceberg- quirks the smallest of smiles. This is probably the man’s equivalent to Jian Yi goddamn beaming. 

"You certainly are an interesting man Mo Guanshan," He Cheng says.

Whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean is so beyond Mo.

***

When He Cheng arrives at his brother's apartment Qiu is waiting just outside the door, keeping a wary eye on his quarry: He Tian, sitting out on the balcony. 

“You’re brother smokes like a chimney,” Qiu says by way of greeting.

He Cheng purses his lips and says, “Only when he’s feeling guilty.”

A snort. “Didn’t know he was capable of that.”

“You’ve always seen the worst in him.”

Qiu raises a brow, one that say _And you've always seen the best_. 

Aloud, Qiu says, “Is the redhead kid going to be back soon? I’m not sure how much longer I can deal with your brother."

"Tomorrow." Qiu grunts his acknowledgement and He Cheng makes his way to the balcony.

It's bitterly cold outside, and worse up on the top floor of the apartment complex. The two exist in a long stretch of silence; He Tian in his chair, He Cheng standing, both staring into the night that blankets the city in darkness, the static air full of the foggy wisps of their exhalations. No greetings, no attempt at small talk. He Cheng spares a moment to wonder why his brother stays out here to smoke. Perhaps another one of his odd forms of self punishment.

"Has he come to his senses and quit?" He Tian finally asks. 

"No," He Cheng answers simply, then adds on impulse, "In fact, he seemed almost offended when I offered him my thanks."

He Tian's resulting laugh rings bitter and hollow. "Sounds about right."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did ya'll see lil Mo bean in ch.327? looking at the fruit and then running from the caterpillar? I died.


	2. iv. captive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First and foremost, I have to thank everyone who's been kind enough to comment and kudos and read. The response to this was so much more than I could have imagined (maybe I'm too used to writing rarepair). I'm overwhelmed with all the validation and it's truly a pleasure to write and share this story. I finished part 4 in time for my birthday 🎁 So I'm posting it early as a present to ya'll. 
> 
> Without further ado,  
> Mo disdain's preservatives while achieving a minor victory, there's no He family discount, Jian Yi is a bigger idiot than usual, and several existential crisis are had. Mostly by Mo.

iv. captive

* * *

All families are complicated

He’d seen plenty of messed up families growing up. Like, oh, _Jian being kidnapped by his absentee dad._ It doesn’t come as a surprise to Mo that mob kids have pretty fucked up families. More so when your dad is the head of said Family of mobsters, but still. That’s an extra special type of complicated. 

Zhan Xi, the most painfully normal person Mo knows, didn’t get a pass. He’s never asked, but something is going on. Something to do with his little sister. It’s subtle, undefined but undeniable.

Whatever is going on with the He brothers is some next level shit as far as Mo can tell. He has absolutely no idea what it’s about, but his interest in finding out sits in the negative digits.

***

Once a month He Tian has what Mo thinks of as ‘check ups’ with his brother.

It’s routinely the worst day of the month. Dealing with his brother seems to have some sort of age regression effect on He Tian, who is always extra petulant, extra stubborn, and extra prone to meltdowns in the days leading up to the visit. It’s like wrangling a toddler –a very large, very heavy toddler, one that religiously visits the gym, and whom Mo can’t just pick up or like, send to his room. 

Mo had previously told He Tian the meeting was at 12:00, when really it’s at 12:15, so today they roll up to a now familiar office building only five minutes late. The only reason Mo can pull the lie off is because He Cheng doesn't call He Tian and set up these appointments– he calls Mo. Because He Tian refuses to speak or interact with his brother except under duress.

It speaks volumes about the brothers' relationship, and Mo has to cover his ears so he won’t hear exactly what it’s saying.

Mo frogmarches his charge inside, into the elevator, and he (literally) shoves the man into the prison of He Cheng’s office and legs it out of there post-fuck’n-haste to savor his hour of peace.

Usually he’ll call his mom or, if she’s at work, Jian Yi. Mo and Zhan Xi, who are both not fond of phone conversations, might exchange brief text conversations about whatever.

(Zhan Xi is also Mo’s only option for complaining about He Tian, since Mo keeps his mom foggy on the exact details of his job, and Jian Yi is a motormouth and friends with the guy. Conversely, Mo is the only person Zhan Xi trusts enough to vent to about his boyfriend.) 

Before the hours up Mo will go to grab something to eat. Today it’s ramen –it’s a good deal for the price, but a little over salted– and then he heads back to collect his obstinate client, who is extraordinarily hissy, even by normal post-checkup standards. This is saying a lot. 

Something obviously went down, but He Tian’s face is set in cool, rigid apathy. His blank face can't hide his agitation. He's twitchy around the edges, alternating between biting the inside of his cheek and pressing his thumb to his lips. He doesn’t speak to Mo for the whole ride, didn’t even try to pester Mo into letting him drive.

Sitting in the cage of the car with his client is a tense affair, but it's not the end of it. When they get back, He Tian stalks straight to his room –Mo’s honestly surprised he doesn’t slam the door behind him like a fucking child– and confines himself for a solid two hours of sulking.

He Tian has never passed up so many chances to harass Mo. It’s unsettling. To distract himself, he starts planning the meals for the coming week and preparing tonight's meal.

“You told him I wasn’t taking my vitamins,” is the first thing he says to Mo upon emerging from his brood session. He still has his guise of icy disinterest going, and his statement is equally dull sounding.

Mo looks up from where he’s working to pin He Tian with an unimpressed look. “Because you haven’t been– at least not all of them.”

“That’s not my brother’s business, and it certainly isn’t yours.”

“I am contractually obligated to make it my business. Don’t pretend like you don’t know– you’ve read the fucking thing.” 

“My brother has no right to know, or care. Not that he actually does as long as he’s got me trapped and leashed.” He Tian says, as glacial as –ironically– his older brother.

Mo groans internally. This is a conversation he wanted to avoid. 

Mo sets the knife down so he can give He Tian his full attention. Mo tries to sound somewhat serious, but probably sounds only slightly less irritable than usual. “Look asshole, I don’t know what your beef with He Cheng is, and thank fuck I don’t have to, because I sure as shit don’t wanna. I’m here to do my fucking job. That involves making sure you take your fucking vitamins. Now get the fuck outta my face.” And he goes back to chopping onions.

He Tian doesn’t go anywhere, apparently as determined to have this conversation as Mo is to avoid it.

“You can’t make me take them if I don’t want to.” He Tian’s voice is steel, and when Mo looks up to scowl he sees it reflected in those eyes– hard as nails and just as grey. Not the usual untouchable slate. It’s a deadly seriousness that threatens to pierce if struck. It’s a hazard sign in the middle of his face, and it makes Mo… not afraid exactly, but cautious. Like He Tian’s a panther that's got him trapped in the middle of the fucking kitchen, and if Mo’s not careful then all he’s got to defend himself is a kitchen knife.

He’s not so cautious it makes him stop scowling though. 

“I am well fucking aware of that,” he says, sardonic. “There are plenty of fuck’n ‘vitamins’ in the world. If you don’t like the ones you’re on, then ask about switching. Then you don’t have to skip them, I don’t get stuck in the middle, you won’t get a lecture, and I don’t have to put up with your mopey ass!” Mo points his cooking knife at He Tian. “Scram if you want me to make your fucking dinner!”

Again, He Tian does not scram. He folds his arms on the island counter and leans down to pillow his cheek against them. He watches Mo work for a time and Mo does his damnedest to ignore it, focusing instead on placing the chopped onion off to the side and starts working on dicing shallot.

At the beginning of this farce Mo had thought it’d get easier to ignore the weird-staring. Kind of like exposure therapy or stockholm syndrome. 

That idea is super dead. There is absolutely no getting used to being watched by a dangerous predator stalking you.

“What’s for dinner?” He Tian asks suddenly, apparently having pulled a one eight. He’s back to his usual sinister nonchalance, and his standard shit-eating grin is back in force. 

“If you stop _bothering_ me long enough,” Seriously, how many ways does Mo have to say it before the bastard leaves him alone? “Then braised chicken with grilled, stuffed peppers.”

“Hm, with pickled mustard?” 

Whatever face of disgust Mo must be making has He Tian chuckling. Indignant, Mo narrows his eyes, threatens; “When you die, you’re gonna mummify from all the fucking preservatives you’ve ingested!” 

He Tian laughs for real at that. Keeps on laughing as he leaves Mo in the kitchen to seethe, and it only fades away when He Tian closes the balcony door behind him. 

***

A week later they go to pick up He Tian’s medication, as per normal. Mo notices that there’s one more bottle than usual.

He checks the mistake. It isn’t. The dosage of the risperdal has reduced, the newly added seroquel’s dosage is quite low. The start of slow titration from one to the other.

Mo is unreasonably smug about the small victory.

***

"It's unusual to hear from you," He Cheng says in lieu of hello when he picks up the call.

He Tian snorts derisively. "Yeah, well, it's only because I want something from you. So don't get a big head about it."

"I expected as much."

It’s hard for He Tian to get a good read on his brother over the phone, he’s much better if he can read the man’s micro expressions. But he also doesn’t want to spend any time in the same room together.

He Tian doesn’t bother with his brother's tactful niceties. "I want to start training again."

"You're going to have to be more specific."

"Self-defense training."

"I see," He Cheng says with zero inflection. "I don't do charity little brother.” 

Figures– everything comes with a price, and the He’s don’t do family discounts.

“Yeah, yeah– what’s the condition?"

“Why the sudden renewed interest?"

"Seriously? This is the trade off?" He Tian would think it’s a joke, only his brother is incapable of normal human things like a sense of humor. He Cheng doesn't bother to acknowledge the question, and He Tian has to exert real effort into not getting pissed off. Or at least, not letting his brother detect just how sour he is about this exchange.

"Whoever you hire better be good– and not Qiu." He Tian says flatly and He Cheng gives a hum of assent. "Watching Momo spar made me think about how rusty my combat skills are."

"Oh? And who was he sparing against?" 

There's no way Qiu hasn’t taken the opportunity to relish it, to savor sharing with his older brother his defeat. He Cheng just wants to be a tool about it apparently. Lovely.

"You already know who.” 

"I want to hear it from you little brother."

"I sparred with Momo and lost,” He Tian says repressively. “Happy, Brother Cheng?" 

“Very.”

“And also because I will use every available excuse to get my hands all over little Mo,” He Tian adds in deliberately salacious tones. “I mean, damn– he can pin me to the mats _any_ day.”

He Cheng’s sigh crackles through the receiver, and he can imagine his brother is pinching the bridge of his nose. He Tian feels a little vindicated at the thought.

“I would remind you that it’s a bad idea to sleep with your bodyguard, but the probability of a successful seduction is low enough that I won’t bother.” 

“Great, good talk. Also: you’re a dick.”

“Always a pleasure.”

***

Sparring with He Tian was a mistake. 

It was fine during the match; He Tian has a fighter's instinct paired with natural athleticism, which always makes for a good opponent. It’s obvious that he’s had some serious training, but the guy is out of shape. Mo, who has been training daily for close on a decade, had kicked He Tian's ass without much fuss. It’d actually been enjoyable, and putting a dent in He Tian’s pride is always a pleasure. 

It's after that's the issue. 

***

He Tian is attractive– Mo knows this because he fucking has eyes. That’s just facts, but Mo saw it more as of a passing annoyance when He Tian was hanging all over him like a fucking koala.

Basically: He Tian's personality is so shitty Mo couldn’t even objectively appreciate his looks without simultaneously being harassed. Kind of a buzz kill.

But god fucking dammit, now he suddenly finds himself considerably more conscious of He Tian’s presence than before. The guy is always getting in his face, but now Mo registering things beyond his brain's automatic response of: **_too close_ **

It’s a disease with no cure. Mo can really only blame the way his stupid brain is wired or some genetic predisposition, as he’s always had an unfortunate attraction to danger. 

And He Tian is unquestionably dangerous. The son of an infamously brutal mob boss– dangerously sinister, dangerously erratic, dangerously captivating.

The infection of appeal grows more acute. He keeps noticing more and more horrible things. If only he didn’t know that He Tian is strong enough to manhandle him. Or think about what it feels like to have those thighs flex around him as He Tian fights to get Mo pinned down (and fails). Or be reminded of those unfairly broad shoulders. Or how– 

Basically: He Tian’s personality is still shitty, but Mo can’t ignore that –if it were possible to swap out the personality– Mo would definitely be into He Tian. 

This is horrifying on so many levels, not the least of which is _He Tian’s his fucking client._ Mo is utterly screwed in all directions, and not in a fun way.

***

At first, Mo thinks He Tian's doing it deliberately. 

It’s so performative, the way he’ll wipe something that is absolutely not there off Mo's face during a meal, and pop his offending finger or thumb into his own mouth, eyes bright with sinister joy as he makes some stupid innuendo. The man's habit of crowding Mo into one of his traps so he can run his lips, tongue, teeth over the skin of Mo neck is in no way accidental either.

But there are some marked peculiarities, quirks pointing to this being more than just idle speculation. 

There’s the way He Tian chews his thumb nail when he's planning (scheming) and worries his bottom lip when he’s stressed. There’s his tendency to idly suck on the end of a pen when he’s distracted with working. Even the smoking, how he sometimes doesn’t even light the damn cigarette, all of it points towards what is, undeniably, an oral fixation.

It’s hellishly unfair that He Tian can now make Mo’s life a misery without even trying.

***

_Incoming call from Zhan Zhengxi…_

Mo frowns at his phone. Weird, Zhan Xi usually just texts.

Mo picks up the call and gets halfway through “Hello?” before Zhan Xi interrupts, “I can’t find Jian Yi.”

Mo feels his entire body going cold all over, then hot, then cold again. His stomach drops out of his body. His throat goes painfully tight, and he has to work very hard to keep from losing his carefully compartmentalized shit. By the sound of it, he’s not the only one. Perpetually stoic Zhan Zhengxi sounds almost frantic. 

Jian Yi, of all people, would never vanish from Zhan Xi’s life –not again– and that certainty hangs anxious and unspoken between them.

“What happened?” Mo manages to choke out of his clenched vocal cords. He’s vaguely aware that the phone is moving against his face, small tremors starting up. Damn the adrenal system.

“I called his guard,” Zhan Xi replies. “And he thought he was still in the apartment. I’ve been trying to reach him for three hours Mo. He’s _gone_.”

"When did you last see him?"

"I saw him maybe five or six hours ago. We met for lunch, and then I left for class, but when I got home he wasn’t bumming around on my couch like usual.”

“Fuck– right. Okay.” Mo says it more for his own benefit than Zhan Xi’s, trying to organize his fragmenting thoughts. He doesn't have the luxury of time for a break down. It’s unproductive, and no doubt Zhan Xi’s (internally) freaking out enough for ten people. 

Mo starts tracking down his computer. He’s going to need it. 

“Alright, I’ve got some questions.” 

***

He Tian isn't the only person in the penthouse to suffer from nightmares. 

Mo doesn't thrash in the panicked mess of night terrors, unwakeable and distressed. Mo's dreams are more subtle in their terror. Fighting and clawing against something large and unkillable. Those he loves getting hurt while he screams and seethes as some invisible barrier keeps him trapped. Useless and impotent. 

What good is he if he fails to protect his loved ones?

***

“Any leads?” – “Any ransom demands?” – “What do we know so far?”

Working his way through asking Zhan Xi basic questions is standard protocol. Also, that’s the most his scrambling brain can manage to locate at the moment. But most of Zhan Xi answers are increasingly annoyed _‘I don’t know’s,_ and _‘they aren’t telling me anything’_ , and with each consecutive non-answer Zhan Xi’s futile rage begins to saturate his voice. Zhan Xi, a master of ruthless compartmentalization that Mo often envies, is starting to show the cracks of a broken and mindless fear. One wrong move away from screaming at him, Mo thinks darkly, locating his laptop in his room– and his klonopin. He shakes out two pills, swallows them dry, and wonders if there’s enough space on his bed for him to set up.

"Who knows he’s missing?"

This time, Zhan Xi has a real answer. “That new guard. I don’t know what his name is –muscly, short-ish, a receding hairline.” Which describes something like half of the Families underling. “His father. He Cheng and a-Qiu. And, uh, probably some of their underlings. Or at least I assume so.”

Okay, good. That’s a start. The Jian family is known for its prowess as trackers, and He Cheng is… well, He Cheng is He Cheng: ferociously calm, efficiently vicious, ceaselessly protective.

“Did they try finding him using his phone?” Mo asks next. They probably already had, and if they hadn’t, Mo could, but it’d be a lot faster to have a specialist in that shit to do it. 

Mo admits to himself that he’s going to need more space to work than his room can offer, so he sticks his phone on speaker before he can fumble everything onto the floor. He misses the tail end of Zhan Xi’s reply, “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“Someone mentioned finding it ditched in some dumpster downtown.”

“Throwing off the trail means this isn’t a hack job.” Mo says idly, heading for the dining room. “I’d say at least one person involved has some basic experience. Probably whoever’s orchestrating.”

“What ‘cha doing little Mo?” 

Mo jerks around, swearing when he nearly drops his fragile cargo, and finds He Tian lounging in the living room, watching some shitty reality show.

(He absolutely does _not_ notice that He Tian is wearing joggers and no shirt. Nope. Not at all.)

“What’s it to you!?” He snaps, ready to lash out; thinks better of it, “Fuck, never mind. Just don’t fucking bother me!” Mo snarls and storms off.

Once the words are out of his mouth Mo the indignities of hindsight set in. He’d let the exact worst thing that could’ve come out of his mouth, come out of his mouth. 

Mo settles in at the dining room table with his laptop, smarting with regret. Just as he predicted, He Tian wanders into the room soon after to lean against the wall, watching Mo with the rapt attention of the decidedly contrary. A silent, ominous sentinel– and it’s only with herculean effort and years of repression that Mo doesn’t descend into a paroxysm of fury. Because priorities.

***

There are a lot of unspoken rules in the Mafia.

Not exactly surprising. Mo’s pretty sure they can’t just write up constitutions or like, legitimate legal documents of Family laws. Probably ...maybe? 

Regardless, most of those rules are just common sense to someone who's spent any amount of time on the street (a requirement Mo readily meets). One big difference: when you're part of/tangentially involved with the mafia it’s basically sacrin to ignore your phone. Radio silence means trouble; which means the cavalry is coming; which means that if your phone is accidentally on Do Not Disturb there will be a lot of irritated people. Mo recommends not irritating mafia members.

Jian Yi, for all his careless frivolity and penchant for disappearing under the noses of those assigned with his safety, _always_ picks up his phone. 

***

He, Zhan Xi, and, surprisingly, He Tian (maybe it shouldn't have been. Jian Yi is literally his only friend) wait through a solid hour of shit-all. The only responses Mo got from check-in’s was that the search was ongoing. No other updates. No other forthcoming information. He Tian didn’t chime in with anything either, and being a compulsively nosy narcissist, the man would without a doubt be: A) digging for intel. B) announce it to all the moment he did learn anything. Mo is starting to get increasingly desperate. Zhan Xi, more noticeably distressed. Even He Tian is showing flashes of tense concern in between insufferable fits of blithe posturing.

It _better_ be posturing, or Mo is going to crush his balls.

Mo cogitates. 

He knows they'll find Jian Yi eventually. Maybe today, maybe not, but the Jian's have built a reputation as a Family that does not quit until a quarry is found. They would sooner burn a city to the ground or make the gutters run red than admit defeat. The condition they find Jian Yi in is the real concern.

Mo wants to keep his metaphorical trump card on the DL. Keeping things close to the chest has been his M.O. since he was six, and the breaking with deeply ingrained instinct is something that hurts on a level removed from the realm of physical pain. Something less flesh and more primal. 

But he wants Jian Yi back more. 

With reluctance, he finally asks, “Zhan Xi, that ring you gave him, was he wearing it earlier today?” 

“What? What has that got to do with anything?” Zhan Xi says a bit waspishly.

“It could help me find Jian Yi.”

“How’s a damn ring supposed to help? It’s not like it’s some kind of fancy... I don’t know– SmartRing with GPS tracking and stuff!”

“It’s important Zhengxi, answer the question.”

“Of course, the idiot never takes it off,” Zhan Xi says at a more controlled volume, though with the same amount of poorly repressed heat.

Zhan Xi had given the ring to Jian Yi to... commiserate getting their act together or something. A symbol of their future, promise rings. Relationship stuff. Whatever, point was, Jian Yi never takes the fucking thing off.

Which is exactly why Mo had planted a tag on it ages ago. So, it sort of does have its own GPS; though Mo feels weird comparing an experimental, military-grade tracer program to something so ordinary. 

“Okay, give me half an hour and–” Mo starts to say. 

Mo had been focused on multitasking between his continued questioning of Zhan Xi and investigations, mostly blocking out He Tian coming over to loom wordlessly. He was hovering just outside Mo’s personal space earlier (how He Tian seems to know exactly where that boundary is, Mo hasn’t a fucking clue). His client being a massive shitdick was old news and Mo had stolidly ignored the blatant, slow, systematic encroachment on his personal space. He frequently has to remind himself that there’s more important shit to deal with than having yet another pointless argument about He Tian’s wholly lacking respect for other people's space.

At least up until now. He Tian had inched his way close enough that Mo doesn’t need to look to see how close he is, he can _feel_ it. The aura of the man’s presence, his body heat mingling with Mo’s own. Mo already feels like a raw, open nerve and now He Tian is squeezing lemon juice into it. 

When He Tian casually rests his hand against the nape of Mo’s neck, everything becomes too much. 

“Scram!” Mo elbows He Tian out of his space. “Don’t fuck’n bother me just ‘cause you got nothing fuck’n better to do!”

“What?” Says a very confused Zhan Xi.

“Not you,” Mo snaps at his phone, and continues; “Stop fuck'n messing around He Tian!” 

This, of course, doesn’t faze He Tian one bit. The man plants his ass to half sit, half lean on the table right next to where Mo is working. He says in tones of, frankly insulting, cheer, “I don’t like being given directions.” 

“Is this some kinda fuck'n joke to you?!” His snarling demand is scalding, wrathful, arguably extreme. “Jian Yi’s _gone!_ If you’re not gonna be fuck’n useful, than either quit screwing around or scram.”

“Little Mo, don’t be so serious.” He Tian says. He looks completely at his ease, as smugly self satisfied as ever, and not like his only friend has been abducted.

If the goal was to make Mo more pissed off, more homicide-ily inclined, then He Tian has nailed it. The fuse on Mo's temper is lit.

“You’re so grouchy faced.” He Tian reaches out and carelessly pushes Mo’s eyebrows up and out of their perennial scowl with his fingers. “You’ll be more handsome if you relax your brows.”

Mo shoves the prodding fingers aside to snarl, “If you really consider Jian YI a friend you could at least fuck’n pretend you care that he’s missing, but you don’t because ”

“Focus Red,” Zhan Xi says in warning.

Mo still intends to ignore the admonishment, but He Tian beats him to it by resting a hand on Mo’s shoulder. He leans in fractionally, but they were so close before that the almost imperceptible change is horribly noticeable; also extremely menacing. Equally menacing is the friendly grin plastered on He Tian's sharply handsome face. It’s a loaded gun of a smile, and Mo reflexively inches away from it. 

“I didn’t hear you properly.” He Tian says in a very pleasant, very neutral tone. “You want to repeat that?”

Before Mo can explode, damn himself by saying something even more insulting and along the lines of _‘you pathetic excuses for a human being.’_ Zhan Xi cuts in.

He says, “He Tian.” 

That’s all- just the man’s name. 

Mo doesn’t expect it to have any sort of effect, so he’s kind of floored when He Tian lets go of Mo, takes a step back, and closes his eyes. Mo might’ve spent more time marveling over He Tian actually listening for the first time in his miserable life, but, through years of long practice, Mo forces the ticking time bomb of his anger into a small box and shoves it somewhere out of sight to open later.

He focuses on actual important things: bringing up a particular file he has stashed deep in his computer's hard drive. 

He Tian goes back to hovering at an inoffensive distance, a fly buzzing just out of swatting range, acting as if they hadn’t been seconds away from strangling one another less than sixty seconds ago.

 _Right, focusing,_ Mo reminds himself.

***

The first time Jian Yi got abducted was during middle school. It took three days before they got him back, and Mo has never really gotten over it. That’s why he has tracker tags on not only Jian Yi, but Zhan Xi and his mother. 

Not that any of them know it.

***

The titles for the files he pulls up are all very generic and unassuming. It’s a deliberate choice on Mo’s part, but He Tian –degenerate that he is– jumps straight to one particular conclusion. 

“Momo, is that your porn stash?”

Holy shit. This chicken dick motherfucker. He actually sounds _curious_ about it too.

“Guanshan, did I just hear that right?” Zhan Xi says, tone eerily even. “You’re looking at porn right now.” _Oh shit._ Mo’s can count on one hand the number of times he’s heard that exact tone from Zhan Xi, but it’s never been directed at _him_ before and Mo never wants it to be ever again.

“It’s not fucking porn!” Mo raps out furiously. “It’s a ghost file!” 

He turns in his seat to glare narrow-eyed at He Tian while he waits for the program to load. He Tian give him that fakeass dazzling smile that draws people who are not Mo to him like black magic. 

Mo’s too emotionally drained at this point to get properly mad again, so he just flips the bastard off and mutters under his breath about disgusting perverts.

The tracking program pops up and He Tian makes a little _oooh_ noise of comprehension. Mo pulls up his file on Jian Yi and gets down to business. It takes only fifteen minutes for the system to lock on to Jian Yi. 

“He Tian, can you– ” Mo starts to say, but it’s not necessary– He Tian’s already got his phone out. “Zhan Xi, I have a lock on Jian Yi's possible coordinates.”

“You do? Where is he? I–” 

Mo overrides him quickly. “Zhengxi, I need to hang up the phone to speak with a superior. The sooner I do, the sooner you get Jian Yi back, understand?” Mo tries to sound firm and calm, authoritative enough that Zhan Xi will listen instead of argue. “And once I’m through, I will call you back and tell you. I promise. Actually, if Jian Yi’s soon to be ex-guard is still with you,” –and that asshole better fucking be or Mo is going to remove the eyeballs from their sockets– “Then have him escort you here. But right now I need to focus on recovering Jian Yi.”

“Right– yeah.” Zhan Xi takes a shuddery breath, and he sounds more steady when he speaks again. “Okay. See you soon," and more softly; "Thanks Red.”

Mo hangs up.

He finds He Tian is already part way through an explanation to his brother. “–put a tracer on him,” he says, sounding like he’s finally taking this serious. “Innocuous looking; a ring he wears all the time. The coordinates are…” He Tian leans over Mo’s shoulder and reads it out. “That’d be right on the edge of the south docking port.” He swears sotto voce. “That’s Huso territory. Figures.”

He Tian’s right that the location is obviously tucked safely in Huso territory, but some niggles about it. It’s almost _deliberately_ so; makes Mo wonder if someone is trying to pin this on the Huso. 

Mo can worry about that later thought. “Tell him the signal’s been stationary for over an hour and a half.”

“Just a sec.” He Tian fiddles with his phone, then sets it down on the table. “Alright, you’re on speaker. Can you repeat that Mo”

He repeats himself, adds; “I also have the last seven days of Jian Yi’s movements on record. I can send you the info if you want. Might be useful."

To know where they abducted him and the route they took to get him to the secondary location. The route the perpetrators took, the territories they traveled thought or those they didn’t, it might reveal other inconsistencies. He Cheng’s smart enough, been at this long enough –fucking grew up in the business– that Mo doesn’t have to spell that shit out.

“That could prove useful, if you wouldn’t mind.” There’s a pause, then He Cheng says, “I was unaware you had such high caliber tools at your disposal.”

“Only way to keep tabs on a fuck’n train wreck of a human being like Jian Yi,” Mo says, too busy compressing the files, giving them a cursory encryption, and sending them in the right secure attachment, and forgetting exactly who he’s talking to; that he should probably mind his manners around the older He sibling. “S’not like this is the first time Jian Yi’s gotten his dumb ass kidnapped.” 

(For whatever reason Mo can’t later fathom, He Cheng doesn’t reprimand him on the back-chat.) 

This isn't technically true. Mo had tagged Jian Yi more as a precaution, and until today had never resorted to using it, as this is only the third time Jian Yi’s gotten kidnapped. Which is honestly a fucking miracle. This is technically not true either, if you count the whole dad-napping incident. 

Mo counts the dad-napping.

He’s startled out of his internal brood by He Tian draping an arm over his shoulder, gangely arm caging Mo in as he presses closer. 

“Do you have a tracer on me?” asks He Tian. Because god forbid they go too long without him being the center of attention. 

Mo manages to free himself without much of a struggle. “I couldn’t get rid of you if I tried.” The insult comes out a little half-baked. Damn.

“Little Mo, you are so heartless.” He Tian tugs at Mo’s sleeve like a child looking for attention– which honestly isn’t too far from the truth. “Don’t you cherish me?” 

And Mo, lacking any pretense of respect for the younger He spawn, doesn’t hesitate to say, “Shove a cock in it, the adults are working.”

(Mo could swear he hears He Cheng make a discreet choking noise.)

“What happens if I get kidnapped Momo?” He Tian pouts, but there’s an air of unholy mischief surrounding the asshole.

“I thank whatever higher power that I’m finally free from you.”

“Isn’t keeping me safe your job, hmm little Mo?”

Mo has the horrible realization that He Tian will almost certainly get himself lost on purpose if he doesn’t put a fucking tag on him now. Which isn’t a huge deal, but it’s also possible –boarding on real fucking likely– that this idiot could actually get himself in real trouble while playing fucked-up hide and seek.

Mo rapidly racks his brain for the best object for the job. Comes up blank. 

“How are you so annoying!?” Mo complains; in part because the dipshit is hanging off him again, but also stalling. 

“Pick something you want and I’ll put a tag on it,” Mo eventually settles for. “But only if you actually fucking wear it. This shit ain’t easy to get or cheap, and I’m not playing along just to mollify your vanity and compulsive need for attention.”

He has never seen He Tian so excited before, like he just won the fucking lottery. Only he’s filthy rich, so not like that at all. 

“If you buy me something pretty, I promise to wear it,” He Tian says, solemn as a priest. 

“I’m not buying you shit!” he snaps vehemently. “I couldn’t afford anything _your_ pretentious ass will actually wear!”

This puts a brief damper on He Tian’s inexplicable joy, but the man bounces back quick, “I’d wear anything you picked out for me. No matter how cheap. Pinky swear; scouts honor; cross my lovely heart and hope to die.” To Mo's utter horror, He Tian’s excitement abruptly multiplies. “I’ll buy you something too!” 

“You." Mo emphatically points at He Tian in warning. "Don’t you fucking dare. Your taste is gaudy as hell.”

“Hey now, I can be classy. I just normally have better things to do.”

“Like I give a shit. You’ll end up fucking buying something in the six figures– with fucking gold and diamonds and shit– like the aberration you are.” 

“As much as I love the idea of draping you in gold and jewels, even I’m willing to admit I wouldn’t be able to coerce you into wearing them.” He Tian hums to himself, quietly thoughtful. “How about earrings?” He finally suggests.

Mo squints at He Tian. “You planning on getting your ears pierced?”

“Not for me; you little Mo.” He Tian reaches out and tugs on one of Mo’s earlobes. He can see the way He Tian’s biting the inside of his cheek as he thinks. “Something understated. But a little edgy,” he says, idly considering, and _still_ fucking fondling Mo’s ear. A thoughtless motion, like He Tian’s not even fully aware of what he’s doing. Which is worse 

“Black is subtle, right?” He Tian says to himself after a pause. “Onyx. Jet maybe?”

“How has this turned into you buying me jewelry?!” Mo snarls, batting the ear groping fingers away; hopes he’s not blushing as furiously as he thinks he is. “If you want to buy someone jewelry then find yourself a woman!”

He Tian is obviously amused –fucker lives for making Mo embarrassed– but there’s an additional cock of a single brow that’s new.

Managing to sound _completely fucking serious,_ He Tian says, “Maybe I want you to be my woman, Momo.” 

Which is the absolute worst. Mo can only manage to make garbled rattling sounds of wordless exclamations. It’s akin to rocks in a garbage disposal, and Mo’s face is one hundred percent totally on fire. 

He Tian looks _immensely_ pleased with himself, the sadistic fucker. “You look like a cute little tomato.”

“I hate to interrupt this charming conversation,” He Cheng says, absolutely atonal. “But I feel the need to inform you that Jian Yi has been safely recovered.”

***

Mo can’t quite bring himself to look He Cheng in the eye for weeks. Later on, when He Tian gives him the studs just as he’d threatened, Mo makes a point to take them out anytime he potentially might run into the eldest He brother.

***

They’ve all gathered at He Tian’s penthouse by the time He Cheng and his man hulk show up with Jian Yi in tow. He's a little ruffled and there's some small bruising, but otherwise unscathed and obnoxiously cheerful. 

He Tian’s first move is to immediately kick his brother out. He tries to get rid of Qiu, but to He Tian's consternation, Qiu’s once again assigned to be Jian Yi’s bodyguard for the foreseeable future. Qiu doesn’t seem happy about this either. 

Then there’s plenty of hugging (Zhan Xi and He Tian), relief (all of them), and people berating Jian Yi for putting himself in danger –Mo– who greets his friend's return by ripping Jian Yi a new one of epic proportions, whacking him on the head a few times in the futile hope that, if he puts a crack in the guy's skull, maybe some of it will seep through and make it into the idiot's brain. 

Jian Yi tries to feed Mo some hot bullshit about how his stealth mode abilities are just as effective on his enemies as they are on his allies. That serves to set Mo off on a second hot-tempered rant, which is usually the signal for Zhan Xi to swoop in and play mediator. He very pointedly doesn’t. A sweetly passive-aggressive middle finger to his boyfriend that Mo can appreciate. 

Once Mo runs out of steam with the lecturing, he lets Jian Yi get away with hugging him and ruffling his hair and shit. Allowing a modicum of fucko’s cooing about how cute it is that he cares about him, blah, blah, blah, before getting around to the inevitability of threatening to crush his balls. He Tian spends time alternating between snickering at the whole production and teasing Jian Yi, often pulling him into headlocks and aggressively ruffling his hair. As far as Mo can tell, Qiu is hiding in the kitchen. Having an existential crisis probably.

“I can’t believe you put a tracker thingy on me!” Jian Yi whines at some point. “Where did you even put it?”

“I had it surgically implanted in your right asscheeck.”

Jian Yi stares at Mo. Mo stares back.

“I can’t tell if– I mean, are you... joking?”

Zhan Xi rolls his eyes. “Of course he is, idiot.”

“Am I though?” Mo deadpans. Utterly straight faced.

It’s actually not a bad idea either. Mo could probably talk He Cheng into doing something similar to He Tian.

Later, He Tian goes out on the balcony for a smoke, and that’s Mo’s opening shit-talking his client out of hearing. 

He complains to Jian Yi about the other man’s lack of concern over the ordeal, for being an insensitive ass even by Mo’s standards, and just generally being an obstinate fucknut. Jian Yi pulls Zhan Xi into the conversation and demands the full run down. 

Annoying, Jian Yi finds the whole thing funny. “He was trying to get you to relax Red, duh!” He explains, flapping a hand like he’s trying to wave away Mo’s lack of social graces, which is hypocritical in the extreme. “You were both on edge, so he tried to defuse the tension when you got snappy.” 

Mo is unimpressed. “He failed spectacularly.” 

“You gotta cut the guy a little bit of slack Red,” Zhan Xi says. Always has to be fucking diplomat. “He was a total loner before Jian Yi, and he’s still new to the whole friendship thing.”

“He’s my client, not my fucking friend! Plus the guy’s a master manipulator!”

“Gathering admirers and sycophants isn’t the same as making friends.” Jian Yi pats Mo on the shoulder in a _‘there-there’_ sort of way. Mo is tempted to forcibly remove the hand from the rest of Jian Yi's body. “I love you redhead, but being friends with you is like walking through a minefield. Eventually you’re gonna set a few off.” And as an afterthought: “No offense.”

“How is that not offensive!?”

“And He Tian isn’t even walking across; sprinting is more like it,” Zhan Xi adds matter of fact.

“Still not friends!”

“Poor, stupid bastard. He’s got no idea what he’s getting himself into,” Jian Yi says brightly –to Mo? Or about He Tian? He can’t tell, just that there's a sense of a depraved eagerness at the prospect. Mo’s not sure what would be worse. 

***

As a joke, Mo gives He Tian an absurd ring: a tacky monstrosity with candy cane stripes and an ugly green star. He Tian acts like Mo just handed him the world's largest diamond and wears it constantly, just as promised.

Mo retroactively has to put the tag on it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 5 is like, 98% done. Hopefully I'll get it up by Saturday ✨
> 
> ((omg, ch 330 & 331??? He Tian being a needy large-infant, a-Qiu being a-Qiu, the helicopter, the fact He Cheng actually sends it away, Jian Yi and the duck. Too much. I die.))


	3. v, vi, vii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saddle up for some angst and hurt/comfort ya'll 😉
> 
> There's a bit of discussion on mental health stuff in this chap, and there are probs people reading this who are less familiar with the psychiatric than myself, so I have some basic definitions in the end note.  
> ((quick disclaimer: descriptions of mental illness are based on my own experience. There may be inaccuracies and I welcome feed back- as long as it's constructive and not critical.))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait ya'll! Life stuff happened :/ Some of it good though! But California's on fire 🔥🔥🔥 (again) and the weather has been majorly wacky and there were some rolling blackouts.  
> On the bright side, this ended up longer than I planned! I didn't spend much time editing it tho, so it's not as polished as I like, but I can always retroactively edit.

* * *

**v. disordered**

Spring has always felt like a time for new beginnings. The cycle of life starts again– flowers bloom, the snow and bitter cold melts away, and the world is a clean slate. 

Things change all the time of course, that’s life. Maybe Mo just notices them more at these times. Some piece of him –some childish, romantic leftover– has always seen spring as a season of change. 

***

Despite numerous and insistent protests on He Tian’s part, He Cheng forcefully drags his brother along to the He family’s annual gathering in Beijing. For five days, He Tian will be He Cheng’s business. Mo’s not sure how the older He brother pulls it off– some combination of threats and bribery no doubt. This doesn’t make He Tian any easier to live with. He’s increasingly moody in the weeks leading up to the trip, which He Tian tries to mask by being extra nonchalant and obnoxious. Mo consoles himself with the promise of a sweet, sweet reprieve from his annoying client.

Those five free days turn out to be both a repose, and unexpectedly lonely.

The first day of freedom Mo indulges in a whole day spent doing absolutely nothing with Jian Yi and Zhan Xi. It's like they’re kids again; they loaf around Jian Yi’s apartment (which is reasonably sized and not a fucking mansion of a penthouse), Zhan Xi kicks both their ass' at video games like always. The pair ignore Mo’s protests and order crappy takeout, and Mo threatens to beat Jian Yi up every time he tries to start a conversation about He Tian.

“Don’t mention him, fucko! That chickendick annoys me to death!” Mo snaps after the umpteenth attempt, but this time it sets Jian Yi to laughing his ass off. 

“I haven’t heard you call someone a chickendick in years,” Zhan Xi remarks, with one of those small, private smiles.

“Man, I remember when you called everyone and their mom’s chicken dicks.” Jian Yi sighs in half-faked nostalgia. “You were such a little punk-ass bitch."

Mo kicks him halfheartedly in the shin.

The highlight of his vacation is luxuriating in the chance to spend the afternoon and evening with his mom. He cooks her dinner and she praises what a fine man he’s become; _such a good cook, your father would be so proud_. He gets to listen to her talk about everything that’s going on at her work, and he tells her somewhat abridged stories of his own job, about how Zhan Xi’s doing at school, and Jian Yi’s recent misadventures. She looks older and more care-worn than when Mo was in high school, but happier and lively. She likes her job, even if Mo personally thinks she works too hard. It’s not necessary anymore, but she just laughs warmly at Mo’s protests, tells him that she just can’t seem to kick the habit.

He does his usual morning workouts, but takes the opportunity to go to the gym without He Tian dictating how long. Not the fancy ass gym He Tian's a member of either, but his old haunt. He gets a chance to go spar with his old gym rat buddies and avoids any questions about the new job taking up all his time.

***

The rest of the time Mo doesn’t really know what to do with himself. It’s weird. 

He doesn’t like it.

***

The sound of the front door opening brings Mo into the living room. He figures it's just He Tian returning from his trip. There’s a loud thunk, and Mo, being habitually hypervigilant, checks anyways. He finds He Tian leaning against the door, the small carry-on luggage bag abandoned at his feet. He’s still dressed for business; black button down, charcoal slacks, shiny-ass shoes. 

He looks like the walking dead.

He startles Mo by coming over and leaning his forehead against Mo’s shoulder. It’s the only point of contact. No grabby hands or impenetrable ring of arms locking him in, and he doesn't show the slightest inclination. They stand there, locked in place, with the only sound the light rasp of He Tian’s breathing. (In some deep recess of his brain, Mo’s vaguely aware that He Tian smells like airplane and stale cigarette ash, instead of the natural richness and cigarette smoke scent that Mo has, apparently unconsciously, come to associate with the man.) Mo swallows hesitantly. This is not normal.

Ultimately, it's Mo who breaks the silence. “Hey… you do’n okay?”

“‘M so done with this shit,” He Tian mumbles, leaning more of his weight against Mo. All six feet plus, two hundred pounds of him. “So fucking tired.”

“Shit, you’re heavy!” Mo gripes, hastily bracing himself so they don’t end up on the floor. “What did you eat growing up, bowling balls?!”

“Too noisy,” He Tian growls out. 

Mo licks his lips nervously, uncertain how to handle this. It feels like He Tian’s on the verge of… Mo isn’t really sure. There's a sense of walking on thin ice. It’s analogous to the time He Tian threatened to sew his mouth shut, but with the volume turned way down. Yet it’s a different species entirely. 

_"What the fuck happened in Beijing?"_ He wonders, and it's with unusual care that Mo presses He Tian back. There’s some niggling part of him that’s convinced physical connection is the one thing keeping He Tian grounded right now, so he keeps an awkward but solid grip on those (stupidly wide) shoulders. Mo had to tilt his head a little lower to get a real look at He Tian's face.

Close up, he looks even worse. A veil of gloom clings to him and sleepless nights have left dusky marks under his eyes. The gloom fills his pores and saturates his skin, yet He Tian simultaneously appears paler than usual, with all the color and personality sucked right out of him. 

He looks like hot garbage, is really what Mo’s saying.

"Let's get you into bed." It’s part order, part suggestion and He Tian's resulting chuckle is subdued, but he still teases back as he lets Mo frogmarch him to his room. "You wanna get in bed with me Momo? So bold."

"As if, chickendick," Mo mutters, more for the principal of the thing, for the comfort of familiar banter. He shoves He Tian into his bedroom, less gentle now, and he leaves the man there while he gets clean sheets out of the hall cabinet.

Mo comes back to find He Tian half undressed, working at unzipping his slacks, and he almost falls over.

"Fuck! Wait to strip until I'm done with the sheets!” Mo succeeds at keeping his voice from breaking like he’s a pubescent teen, and he very pointedly doesn't look at his client. 

"It's fine," He Tian dismisses. "I don't mind.” 

Mo opens his mouth to say something like, _‘who cares if you mind’,_ but it catches in his throat when he feels He Tian press himself almost flush against his back. There’s a spike of irrational panic; something that has nothing to do with possible danger, and everything to do with his shirtless client who is– No, strike that, he’s only wearing a pair of stupid brandname boxer-briefs now. What the actual fuck. Does the guy have no concept of appropriate shame?

He Tian reaches around him, pushes the sheets out of Mo's hands. The fall to the floor and that snaps Mo right out of his flustered stupor. 

"What the hell!"

"Shut up," He Tian growls. Then the fucker promptly drops all his weight against Mo.

They're both sent toppling over, and that’s how Mo ends up sprawled face down in bed with a mostly nude He Tian plastered on top of him. 

Mo desperately tries squirming out from underneath, but He Tian grunts, already more than half asleep, and wraps his fucking arms around Mo. It’s like getting snuggled by a fucking anvil. Mo’s trapped in a bicep prison, stuck in this purgatory of He Tian’s creation, at the mercy of his pituitary gland's embarrassing hormones, and there’s jack-all he can do about it. He just quietly astral project, trying to actively disassociate from the situation and his body's unwanted response, while he waits for the opportunity to make a break for freedom.

When He Tian hits R.E.M. an indeterminate amount of time later, the constraint relaxes enough for Mo to extract himself. Quietly as he can, he storms out, cursing this insane man using every combination of vulgarities he can come up with- creates a few new ones of his own, and goes to take a cold shower. 

***

He Tian sleeps with a light on. He tells Mo it’s because he’s scared of the dark.

Mo’s pretty sure it’s not the dark He Tian’s afraid of, but what images his mind projects onto the blank screen in the middle of the night.

***

Mo jolts awake at the sound of screaming. The hot/cold thrill of cortisol electrifies his nervous system, and Mo’s out of bed before his mind can catch up with his body. His brain reaches the belated conclusion _‘He Tian’_ just before his body skids to a stop and throws open the bedroom door.

He Tian isn’t being attacked or brutally murdered though, thank fuck. He’s twisted up in the un-changed sheets, muttering and sweating. Most of it incoherent, but he's visibly distressed.

Night terrors.

The knowledge doesn’t immediately stop Mo’s heart from beating double time or flush his system of adrenaline. He's till jumpy and disconcerted from the rude awakening, but he leans against the door frame and tries to calm his breathing, keeping vigil from that distance. It’s not the first time Mo’s woken up to He Tian yelling, but it’s not the sixth or seventh time either. He's familiar enough with it to know the episode should pass quickly though, and then Mo can go back to sleep without worrying about He Tian sleepwalking. Mo feels awkward about it, because watching someone sleep is creepy enough, but he’s stuck ineffectually standing guard while He Tian thrashes and makes hurt animal noises. 

It’s weird, Mo thinks as he waits, only hours ago he’d been squashed between that bed and He Tian, being forcibly snuggled. It was like Hello Kitty after a handful of benzos.

This fearful, whimpering person in the bed cannot possibly be He Tian: arrogant and ever unflappable.

Three minutes pass with painful slowness, and the only change is that He Tian has started crying. Little gasping sobs escaping erratically and Mo catches a few words. It’s nonsensical and mostly different variations of _‘no’_ and _‘stop’_ , and one time he even calls out for his brother. Mo can’t really _do_ anything. It’s not like he can wake He Tian. And anyways, it’d just be the same semi-conscious upset, only He Tian would be partially lucid for it.

Just standing here is not an option in Mo’s mind, so when he plainly hears He Tian say _‘help’_ in a small, broken voice, his body just… moves on it’s own.

Which is so, so stupid. He Tian could unconsciously react violently to motion or being touched, his brain adding outside input into the nightmare and turning it into a threat. This only occurs to Mo _after_ he sits at the edge of the bed and starts, very tentatively, sweeping He Tian’s sweat-stuck hair off his face.

He Tian seizes him by the wrist. 

Mo prepares himself for broken bones, but He Tian just… holds on. Like a child with their security blanket or a drowning man clinging to the surface. Mo lets him. He sits there as He Tian starts to calm, and once the restless movements and soft noises quell Mo gets to his feet. Or he tries to at least.

He Tian bolts upright like he’s been electrocuted. His grip tightens painfully around Mo’s wrist, jerking him in. His eyes are wide and unseeing, and his pupils are dilated to pin pricks.

“Let me go!” Mo snaps, using anger to cover his alarm.

Disoriented and unhearing, He Tian yanks him down. Maybe trying to get him on the same level, but their heads end up bashing together.

They both swear at the sudden pain and Mo’s wrist is released. Unbalanced and a bit dazed by his skull smarting, Mo scrambles all the way up off the bed and gets to his feet. “Fuck! That seriously hurts, asshole!” Mo complains, holding a hand protectively over the sore spot.

The headbutt evidently wrenches He Tian out of whatever delirium he’d occupied. Mo can practically see He Tian coming to awareness, registering that he’s just in his room. That the person with him isn’t some nightmare beast, just Mo.

There’s remnants of his dream still clinging to him, his eyes red rimmed, hair starting to mat from the sweat, but his raw voice sounds steady when he retorts. “You’re the one who snuck into my room to hold my hand.”

“You literally fell asleep on top of me!”

“Did I?” He Tian frowns up at Mo, his eyebrows pinching together. He sounds perplexed, but not apologetic when he says, “Huh, I guess I did.” Then his eyebrows get even more scrunched. “You left though. I remember that too. Why did you come back?”

“You were screaming in your sleep asshole, not like I could ignore it.”

“I was?” The confusion again and he's started chewing his bottom lip. “I was dreaming... about– something.” A shadow passes over He Tian's face, black as a void, and in a dull tone he just says; “Boat.”

Mo is admittedly a little weirded out. He Tian usually doesn’t even remember the night terror's dreams, so Mo has never dealt with the fallout and he’s pretty lost on what to do. He supposes he should count himself lucky that He Tian is lucid instead of inconsolable. 

With full-body shudder that actually startles Mo, He Tian’s seems to shake most of the lingering shadows of the dream off. His eyes come back into focus, and he looks up at Mo with a softer, more tired version of his cocky grin. “You came back,” he repeats, and then more smugly; “You care about me that much, huh?”

“I’d be in a lotta fucking trouble if you died,” Mo retorts, but he can also tell he’s blushing, which probably undermines his completely legitimate reasoning. 

He Tian tips forward, lets his forehead rest against Mo’s stomach, and a hand comes up to tangle at the bottom of Mo’s sleep shirt. They stay like that for a while, until He Tian pulls away and makes some suggestive comment that sends Mo stomping back to his own room, furious and blushing. 

***

Why had he let He Tian take comfort in him without protest, he doesn’t let himself examine. He shoves the memory into some forgotten, cobwebbed storage space in his head.

Because if he thinks about it, then he’ll have to recall the exact tone He Tian used when he mumbled the words, _“Thank you.”_

* * *

**vi. dysfunction**

All gin joints in all the world, and yet Mo finds himself accosted by his old boss in the hallway of an upscale bar. What business has brought She Li to town is a dangerous unknown. Not just here, the hallway leading to the men’s restroom, but _this city_. The man doesn’t just take casual trips outside his gang's normal playground in Hangzhou for shits and giggles. If She Li is here, it can only be bad news.

“What do you want She Li?” Mo says curtly. 

“I just wanted to talk,” She Li says. “It’s rare that we see each other nowadays.”

“Make it quick, I’m on the clock.”

She Li doesn’t answer, busy absently fiddles with the collar of Mo’s shirt like he would have back when Mo was under his thumb. It’s been years, but that perfect smile She Li flaunts hasn’t changed either. It’s just as mild and genial and completely fucking fake as it’s always been.

Five years since he’d seen that smile, five years since he left, and he would’ve died happy without seeing it, or this man again. 

“Looks like you’ve got a new job,” She Li eventually remarks. Then that smile morphs to a smirk as he adds, “First the Jian’s whelp, and now the He’s youngest brat. You really are moving up in the world as babysitter to the rich.”

Mo says nothing. Better to let She Li say what he’s come to say and go away without fuss– and quickly. He really doesn’t want He Tian meeting his old boss. The narcissism level would be off the charts. They’d probably get along like two wolverines stuffed in a sack. 

The grip on his collar tightens abruptly, enough to make Mo hiss in discomfort. She Li locks eyes with him, hypnotic in a way that has always reminded Mo of a snake. Paralyzing its prey before swallowing it whole, with too much sickly yellow in what should be hazel. 

“Roll up your sleeve.” She Li hisses the command around a deeply nasty smile. “Let me see it.”

Mo obeys without a fight, bares his forearm and the inked snake coiling around it. She Li breaks eye contact. That’s a relief, but the way She Li stares at the mark –the gross fascination, the way She Li’s breath seems to quicken as he traces the ink with a cold finger– it makes Mo want to crawl out of his own flesh, shiver out of his skin. Makes Mo want to hurl, to scream, to throw a few punches. He wants to scratch She Li’s eyes out, pop them out of the skull with his thumbs. He’s dreamed up so many horrendous, vile ways to get even with She Li, but he knows better. Has known since age twelve that the best way –maybe the only way– to get She Li to leave him alone is submission.

It’s working too. She Li’s surge of chronic aggression quells, soothed by satisfaction of seeing his claim, touching the mark permanently inked into Mo’s skin. He looks up from his trance and all the superficial charm has been abandoned. She Li’s face is nothing but cruelty without remorse, hate without forgiveness, and dominance without empathy. 

Mo expects some parting remark. One sentence, maybe two, that will cut deep enough that She Li can be content to know that Mo is agonizing over it long after he’s gone. Something that will get under Mo’s skin more deeply than even the ink.

He Tian steps into the hall.

Shit.

***

Mo is twelve when he finally understands that She Li is more than just crazy. It had taken getting a dull thrum tack put through each earlobe to see it clearly. 

Silent obedience was the best option for not ending up a victim to She Li’s psychopathy. This did not come naturally to Mo. 

Mo is seventeen when he finally stops fighting back. It had taken years of ending up on the wrong side of She Li’s knives to master the impulse.

It was too little, too late. Somewhere in those years of fruitless resistance, She Li had come to treasure Mo with a repulsive sort of delight. Mo never could figure out why. 

***

He Tian assesses the compromising position. His face is blank, but his eyes are stark and bright. That look had mystified Mo once, but now knows it to be shrewd cunning. 

He Tian floats over to them. His hands are stuffed in his pockets, his smile half smirk and half grin, all devil-may-care. An illusion of relaxed nonchalance.

“Oh, is She Li a friend of yours Momo?” He Tian asks once She Li’s clocked his approach.

“You know each other?” Mo says numbly, gut twisting. 

He Tian nods vaguely, and Mo’s acutely aware of where that nail grey gaze is fixed, where She Li’s touch still lingers.

Mo pulls his arm back, but slowly –too fast and She Li will grab it, force it back where he wants– and works frantically to find an answer to He Tian’s question. One that won’t be flame to gasoline. 

“How did you two meet?” asks He Tian with a polite and conversational disinterest. Yet his gaze is now trained on the enemy– and for all the friendly charade, it’s obvious that’s what She Li is to him.

“We went to school together,” Mo blurts quickly before She Li can reply with something more inflammatory. “I worked at his family's bar for a while after I dropped out of school.”

He Tian doesn't look at him, neither does She Li. The tension level in that very small, very narrow space goes off the fucking charts. 

“We were just catching up. It looks like Guanshan's doing well,” She Li says, and because he has zero chill, adds; “It’s good to see, since last I heard he was in the hospital with multiple stab wounds. He has always been overly fond of knives I suppose.”

“Mister He,” Mo says, hoping to interrupt He Tian before he could reads too far into _that_ particular comment. “If you don’t hurry, your companion for the evening might find another partner.”

The foreign formality grabs He Tian’s attention, and the look he gives Mo blatantly says _what-the-fuck_ ; which is fair, and Mo desperately tries to telegraph: _play along_

To his great astonishment, He Tian does. 

Sort of...

“You’re right Mo. It’s rude to leave a lady waiting.” He Tian’s declaration is passably believable. The feigned earnestness is over the top, but it should fly under She Li’s radar. “I hate to leave so abruptly, but I’ve got a smoking hot date waiting on me. It’d be a shame to let someone else steal her away.” And the bastard ruins everything by _fucking winks_ at _She fucking Li_ and adding, “Fiery redheads aren’t known for their patience~”

 _Oh_ **_fuck you_ ** _He Tian!_ Mo thinks murderously. _Could you be any less subtle?!_

“It’s been a pleasure. We should do this more often.” He Tian says without ceremony, and his parting smile is a pleasantly bland facsimile. The man doesn’t bother to wait for a response either, just swans off without concern. Leaving Mo to leg it to catch up. 

Mo rolls his sleeve back down and resolutely does _not_ look back.

***

Mo is twenty when he leaves Hangzhou. Jian Yi had come with ten men to extract him and, for the second time, She Li could do nothing to stop it. 

To live in a world where his occasional fits didn’t end up with bruises and broken bones was a novelty. It was the relief of waking up from a nightmare. Thought the fear of violence has become so tangled up with outbursts as to be inseparable. 

***

He Tian doesn’t head to the bar though. Instead, he goes straight out of place’s back exit without a word. Mo follows silently, digging around his brain for something to break the tension festering between them, but comes up with stone-cold dick. 

So he doesn’t say anything. He says nothing as on the drive home, or on the elevator up to the penthouse, and he would have kept saying nothing for the rest of the night, but once they’re both through the door He Tian latches on.

Still rattled from running into monsters from his past, Mo’s slow on the uptake. He Tian catches him totally off-guard, and he’s got both Mo’s arms in a behind-the-back hold. His mind is so fucked up, his reaction isn’t even to fight back, but freeze up. 

Wait– no, this isn’t She Li.

His indignance kicks in. “Fuck! If you have something to say, just say it! No need to get violent!” Mo struggles, curses himself for inspiring He Tian to start training again, _because he can’t get out of this fucking hold._

“When did you first meet She Li?” 

He Tian’s clipped tone has Mo put a pause on thrashing. Once again– it’s similar, but where exactly on the scale of Tian Tantrums he’s at, Mo’s not sure. It’s greater than the prickliness post-Beijing, but he’s not sure how far away He Tian is from the I’ll-sew-your-mouth-shut level of conniption. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Mo snaps, flying in the face of his own common sense. “Like I could fucking be bothered to remember!!”

He Tian leans father into his space until he’s pressing flush against Mo’s back. Except where his arms are twisted up against his lower back. He Tian says nothing.

“Seriously! What the fuck is your problem!?” 

“I’m not in a good mood,” He Tian grits out– ready to snap at the slightest provocation. 

“Not my problem.”

“You worked for him. That’s why you’ve got that tattoo.” 

“Like I said, I worked at his family's bar.”

“You won’t be wearing his snake on your skin for something like that,” He Tian retorts acidly, and it’s with grim malice that he grinds out; “He looks at you like you’re his _fucking property.”_

“I am completely fuck’n aware of that– and thanks so much for the reminder! S’not like I get enough of that from seeing the fuck’n tattoo every goddamn day!”

“How long did you work for him?”

“What’s it to you!?”

“Tell me,” He Tian demands, leaning in to snarl it directly into his ear. 

Mo has no intention of ceding and stubbornly says nothing. The result? He Tian **_bites him_ ** on the shoulder. And not in a sexy way- like the bite could sedate his inchoate rage. Like a predator sinking teeth into prey.

Mo breaks out of the hold and whirls around wildly. He puts a few steps between them, touches the place He Tian bit, as if hiding it from sight would do any good. His shirt slightly damp with saliva, and it’s with no small amount of disgusted disbelief he shouts, “What the fuck!? Did you seriously just fuck’n _bite_ me, you psycho?!”

“Does He Cheng know?” He Tian demands, handsome face distorted by a sneer, regarding Mo like a cockroach in the kitchen. His fists clenching, unclenching. “Does _Jian Yi?”_

This self righteous piece of shit, Mo can’t believe this fucker. 

There’s an insane rush, all the blood is running to his head, his heart is ringing a trip-hammer beat faster and faster. Mo is distantly aware he’s tip toeing a fine line. He needs to defuse this conversation before it explodes, before _Mo_ explodes.

“No shit! Where the fuck do you think Jian Yi picked me up? How the fuck do you even think I ended up working mafia jobs? S’not like this is my ideal career choice!”

“We’re going to get rid of it.”

“Huh?!” Mo snarls. 

“The tattoo. I’ll have someone come remove it."

Mo grits his teeth, fights his anger– and loses. 

The words explode from him in a roar, “Are you completely fuck'n _demented?!_ Fuck you! Coercing me ‘s not any better than being forced to get the ink! You manipulative maniac!” 

“I’m not marking you like you’re my property!” He Tian says savagely. 

“As if I’d buy your bullshit you hypocrite! What makes you so different from him, huh!?”

He Tian gets in close again and just fucking _looms_. He Tian’s rage, his assertiveness, his pride– it all just shut down.A perfect mask of stark detachment plastered over it. It does nothing to conceal the near palpable aura of pure hostility He Tian is radiating. “I am nothing like that man.”

Mo should back off. This shit is dangerous. But he finds his hands have balled into fist without permission, and he has to punch the wall a few times so he doesn’t punch He Tian instead. This sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, because his thoughts have obliterated into a jumbled clusterfuck, rattling around in his aching skull, and he feels dislocated from his own rage as he shouts, “The hell you are! You’re just pissed ‘cause it’s not _your_ mark! You never gave a shit about the thing until someone else claimed ownership. It’s all about you and your obsessive need to control! You care about one thing, and one thing only! _Yourself.”_

“You looking to die?” He Tian asks with deadly calm.

“Are you fucking kidding me!? You do realize what my job is, right?! I might be an expendable human shield, but _you – do not – control me_.” Mo stresses each declaration with an unchecked shove to the center of He Tian’s chest– and god, it feels _good_. He craves the release of violence and the relief it brings. He wants to deck He Tian and bash the absolute shit out of him– wants to hit and throw things and scream. “I ain’t gonna get whacked ‘cause I took sides in a fuck’n ‘who’s the ultimate narcissist’ pissing contest. I _refuse_ to feed either of your fragile egos! You can both go jump into a river and die for all I care!” 

All the air is expelled from him and now his chest is a tight, airless knot. Fuck, he’d lost his grip. _So fucking stupid–_ and all he’s got to show for it is a body drained of energy, leaving him gasping, trying to suck in air that isn’t full of hateful screams or terrible rage. 

Oh– oh wait. No. It’s just that he can’t breath. The tight knot in his chest is constricting his lungs. Fuck he can’t breath, his lungs are collapsing but there’s no blood or knife this time. 

A hand grabs his shoulder and Mo flinches away so hard and so fast he falls flat on his ass. He looks up, and He Tian is towering over him– a looming menace. He’s going to kill Mo isn’t he? Or sew his mouth shut. Or both. Fuck. It’s always like this. Mo's rage, then fists and feet and knives and pain.

“Don–” Mo gasps, covers his face with both arms, screws his eyes shut. “Don’t– touch” 

Pulling his knees in, Mo huddles in a ball. He needs to focus on one thing at a time, and breathing is the first. Just one breath. That’s all he needs. Sucking in a wobbling breath, letting it out. Then does it one more time. 

Then again.

Again.

_Breathe_

He makes himself into that breath, reduces himself down to the one sensation. Then makes himself a lung, then a heart; reclaiming one body part at a time. 

“It’s Mo,” He Tian says, unexpected and frantic. “Something wrong, I don’t–”

It would really help if He Tian would stop freaking out. But no– Mo has to focus on something else. He is his body, his breath, the blood in his veins, the beat of his heart. He owns every organ and muscle and ligament and thought. 

“Okay. Okay, right. Where would he keep it?” And He Tian is suddenly no longer in the room, and the quiet is helpful. Centering... Until he comes clumping back in.

“It says take as needed. How many do I give him?” Then sounding closer; “Mo, hey, Momo. Can you look at me real quick?”

 _No–!_ Mo can’t. He doesn't want to see the hate twisting that sharp face or the murder in those eyes. Murder that Mo put there- because he’s stupid. Stupid. Stupid to lash out, _he never learns–_

“Hey, it’s going to be okay.” He Tian says, coaxing and tone a few short steps from soothing. “I’m not mad, promise. I just need to know how much klonopin to give you. Then I’ll go away and no more scary He Tian, but I need you to take the pills first.”

Mo unclenches one hand. Shows two fingers, but doesn’t open his eyes.

There's the sound of the pills being shaken out, other muffled movement, and then he hears He Tian’s retreat. “I need to see you take them, and then scary He Tian will go hide in his room, okay?”

Mo flips him off. He’s having a panic attack and the fucker still manages to be a condescending fucknut, but he opens eyes and uncurls enough that he can take the pills and –oh, there’s even a glass of water. 

Mo takes them and curls back into a protective ball. He hears a door open, then shut. He keeps on breathing, He thinks about his mom– her kind smile, being wrapped in a hug, the comfort of her simple presence and kindness. Her cooking, her laughter, her hands running through his hair.

The panic ebbs eventually. A many armed monster who’s clutching limbs he peels away one at a time until he’s free. It leaves him hollowed out, empty and exhausted. His body, counting the cost for two consecutive meltdowns, betrays him. He falls asleep right there on the floor.

***

Mo is twenty five now. He has been busy rebuilding a life these past years. Sometimes, he even thinks about the future.

But random things – sounds, smells, stimuli– will trigger memories of the bad old days. His outbursts still segue into panic attacks. And there are parts of him that will always be twelve; seventeen; twenty. 

He’ll always be scared of snakes.

***

“I’m sorry about… about last night.” Mo’s apology comes out awkward and stilted, and he smothers a wince at how weak it sounds. 

He Tian looks at him as if there’s an alien crawling out of his ear. _“You’re sorry?”_

Mo really does wince this time. Is it really so surprising? Sure, Mo’s not, like; a nice person or anything, but he’s plenty capable of remorse and some basic human sympathy. 

“Okay, so maybe I’m only sorta sorry about insulting you,” Mo admits reluctantly. “But I am sorry that I got mad and yelled at you and shit before having a meltdown, so. Yeah.”

“Mo, no,” He Tian says, shaking his head. He still seems boggled. “Fuck, I should be apologizing to you if anything.” 

Mo blinks. 

He Tian’s right of course. Mo wasn’t the only person being singularly shitty last night. He just never expected the man to own up.

He Tian runs a hand through his hair with a grimace. “When I get mad –like, seriously pissed off mad– I have a tendency to… overreact. My emotions can get extreme sometimes if I’m not careful. And yeah, I can be a control freak and overly proud, you’re right and I know that. I try not to be. But I'm not all that great at the not-being. So I’m sorry.” He Tian looks at him, appraising. When he finds whatever answer he’s looking for, he actually says, “I should probably apologize for other stuff, but you already look like your head’s about to explode.”

Mo surprises both of them with a laugh. It’s short, as harsh and bawling as a crow with lung rot. Mo didn’t think he’d be laughing anytime in the next month, so crow with lung rot is choice.

“Shit,” Mo says, cynical amusement twisting his grimace into more of a grin. “I think you’re more upset right now than when I legit got stabbed.”

“You were unconscious during that part of your hospital visit. I wouldn’t go so far as to say distraught, but there was undeniably at least some distress.” He Tian admits this easily and without shame, which, Mo has to admit, he would never have been able to do. 

He Tian might be bad at the not-being, but Mo’s bad at the being.

“Jian Yi is going to be just as pissed about yesterday as the stabbing though.” He Tian laments. 

“The fuck does he know about it?” 

“Who do you think I called last night?” He Tian says, giving Mo a look that very obviously translates to _‘duh’_. “It’s not like I knew what to do. I didn’t even know you had medication.”

“I think you mean vitamins.” Mo can’t help saying, sardonic. He Tian flips him off.

“Jian Yi will be coming over soon,” He Tian says. “You have been warned.”

Mo groans, lets his head flop onto the table. “Fuck, he’s gonna mother hen me. I hate that shit.”

“Want to trade?” He Tian offers. 

“Hell no, you deserve to suffer the wrath of Jian Yi, bastard.” 

“Aren’t you supposed to guard me little Mo?”

Mo gives He Tian a mean smile. “Jokes on you chickendick, it’s my day off.” 

***

The whole exchange had been almost… good-natured. Like something about last night’s shitshow shifted their dynamic. Not a lot. Hardly at all.

But He Tian had never apologized, Mo had never made flip comments about the meds.

It’s pretty small, bordering on insignificant, but they’ve never been this… Honest? Open? Forgiving? 

Mo doesn’t even know. It’s not like they’re about to become best buddies or start acting friendly and shit, but there’s a regard for one another, an understanding that Mo can’t fully understand himself… irony sucks. 

***

Mo suffers stiffly through Jian Yi, who spends almost twenty minutes fussing over him and sending He Tian occasional looks of reproach, before actually getting to the real issue at hand.

"What’s that snake doing out of his burrow?" Jian Yi demands petulantly.

"How the fuck should I know?" Mo retorts. "S'not like I asked." 

"I don't like it." Jian Yi sulks. 

"Gee, really?"

"It's been, what? Five years? And now he shows up, sniffing around you again. I mean, I know you're the-one-who-got-away and he's all weirdly obsessed Mo– but still. What's such a big deal that She Li–” 

"Don't start."

Jian Yi sighs. "Redhead, the walls around your heart–"

"I said don't start!" 

Jian Yi sighs more deeply, gustily enough it blows his blonde hair out of his face. "You're such a stubborn crank," he complains.

"There's no way I'm the end-game here,” says Mo, bringing the topic back around to important things, one that don't include digging into Mo’s business. “I know She Li, and he's gotta have some twisted shit planned– I'm just a fun side attraction."

Mo catches He Tian in his peripherals. The way he's _casually_ lounging in his chair, _casually_ listening to the conversation, while _casually_ pretending he isn’t a sly, scheming bastard who thinks evil thoughts and is a plotting plotter. 

"Then why just step out of Hangzhou randomly and come at you?" Jian Yi asks, skeptical. "Doesn't make sense. Shouldn't he, like, do gangster things? Drug smuggling or whatever?"

Mo rolls his eyes at the ignorance. "I reckon he's trying to throw us off." For someone who'd spent most of the last decade around the mob, Jian Yi is ridiculously naive of it's inner workings. A fact Mo both envy's and is routinely annoyed by.

"It makes sense," He Tian interjects into the quiet of Jian Yi's contemplation. "If he can somehow weaken the Jian's hold over the city, then he can make inroads into the city for his own group, get some revenge on you, and harass our little red all at once."

Jian Yi makes a face. “Why the Jian’s though? He could be after you, right? I mean, he didn’t pop up until he started working for you instead.”

"I might be _the one who got away,”_ Mo parrots back. “But who's the one who got me out? And Shanghai is Jian territory. If She Li wanted to undermine the He's, he'd be in Beijing." 

“He’ll be aiming for you. He thinks of Mo as his property.” He Tian agrees, and his eyes flicker over to Mo, but neither of them say anything. “She Li would see it as you stealing from him.”

“Stealing from him- twice,” Mo points out.

He Tian regards him, brows raised in question. Mo crosses his arms and scowls back. He Tian leaves it– for now at least. Goes back to addressing Jian Yi. “If anything, he’s showed up now because he’s no longer under your care. He would see it as an opening to swoop in. He probably thought I wouldn’t see him as more than just some nameless underling. He made a comment about Mo getting hurt while working for me, so I’d hazard a guess that She Li thought it was a good opportunity to ‘steal’ him back.”

“Ha! His mistake,” Jian Yi says. “He'd have better luck trying to move a mountain then get Mo to budge, and She Li _obviously_ underestimates you and your possessive crazy. He tries to take Red from you and you unleash all the ice cold fury of a He on his slithering, shriveled soul.”

Mo opens his mouth to snarl some retort, but He Tian, surprisingly, beats him to it.

“Nobody owns Mo Guanshan," he says adamantly, and again, He Tian’s eyes flick to him meaningfully.

What that meaning is, Mo refuses to look too hard at. 

“Whatever,” Mo says dismissively. “Point is; you should warn your father.” 

* * *

**vii. danger**

Something’s up with He Tian. 

First it’s small things: sleeping less, spending more time in the gym, maybe drinking more than he usually does when they go out during the weekend. 

It’s only been about a week and a half when he clocks the differences, so it could just be one of He Tian’s passing mood swings. Mo checks his if he’s stashing any of his meds away again. He isn’t.

He Tian starts getting more irritable, usually about small things like sounds. Mo’s convinced that, if he was around to shove two meals a day at him, he probably would forget to eat too. He always eats all of the food, so his appetite is, technically, normal. He does have a small tantrum when Mo makes sandwiches instead of whatever it was He Tian wanted to eat. On his better days, He Tian flirts with Mo relentlessly. Once, Mo wakes up to an unsolicited dick pic, and (after the humiliation of angrily jerking off) he tries to smother He Tian with a pillow.

Soon, they start spending twice as long in the gym, and Mo reckons the man is being harder on his body with his usual. Even with the extra exertion, He Tian seems wired. Coiled up tight and ready to snap. He can’t sit still for more than half an hour at a time and even his speech seems to come more rapid. Then suddenly he’s barely sleeping, and when he does sleep the night terrors plague him. He Tian's never had more than one episode every two months, and he has two in a single month. He can’t seem to focus, even on the things he likes. Mo won’t let him drive the car anymore out of seer self preservation instinct because the last time he did, He Tian turned the ride into a fucking drag race. He Tian’s irritability is starting to get more like aggression– but most of it is aimed inward at himself. Which is frankly more concerning in Mo's book. 

It’s with certainty now that Mo goes to He Cheng with the issue. He Tian is too snappish about any questions regarding his mood to be any help, almost paranoid. For He Tian, someone so obsessed with being in control, being at the mercy of his neurotransmitters must be a living hell. Mo needs pointers on how best to curb what is _obviously_ a manic episode.

When Mo tells as much, He Cheng just looks at him. At first, he thinks it’s just the weird-staring, but then Mo starts reckoning it might be more than that.

“I have no idea what that is.” He Cheng says. “Do you mean maniac? He’s gone insane?”

“You do know your brother’s bipolar,” Mo says warily.

“Of course.”

“Do you know what it means for someone to be bipolar?”

“No, that’s why I hire the doctor.”

Mo has to take a minute. 

This is his boss. Mo can’t yell at his boss. Who is also probably the most dangerous man Mo knows, even without taking into account his army of goons. He can’t grab the man by the shoulders and shake him so hard his brain rattles around while he yells _‘Do you have any idea how damaging your blatant ignorance is? Do you know how helpless he must be without someone to trust? Do you have any idea how lucky you are that your brother’s even_ **_alive_ ** _right now?’_

“Okay,” Mo says, using every skill he can manage in this oppressive awful office to not explode. “Okay,” he repeats again. “Say you have seizures. You take your anticonvulsants every day. You do all the preventative care. And still, sometimes you’ll have seizures. Someone with diabetes: you take your insulin, you eat the right food, and you still could suffer a diabetic attack.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Your brother is currently having the mental health equivalent of a seizure. His brain chemicals are out of balance like a diabetics blood sugar. He’s been taking his meds, seeing his psych weekly, and doing his therapy and mindfulness shit– but right now, his brain is basically on fire. I need to know how to put it out.”

Mo worries he might have overstepped. Maybe his tone had been a little sharper than acceptable. Maybe He Cheng will think he’s being accusatory when Mo’s trying his absolute damnedest not to be. 

“Is that why he gets like that? His brain chemistry?” He Cheng’s head tilts to the side, and his perfect eyebrows draw together _ever_ so slightly, but on that unmoving iceberg of a face it stands out. “I always saw it as childish rebellion. I thought it to be something he would grow out of.”

“That's some extreme rebellion,” Mo says bluntly before he can stop himself. 

“My brother is a very extreme person, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.” _Because he_ ** _also_** _has_ _BPD you dickhead!_ “It's not uncommon for mafia children to deviate from expected behavioral patterns and societal norms."

“There’s deviant, there's disordered, there’s dysfunctional, and then there’s _danger_.” Mo stands up. “I need to get back. If I’m gone too long he might try’n burn the building down or something.”

***

Mo indiscriminately wields his anger as both a shield and weapon against any who dare get close. Compulsive anger is his native language, he doesn’t know how to be anything else. There’s only so much self awareness and coping techniques can do. 

Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb. 

Today he has to take a private moment in the car to release all the outrage he'd repressed during that conversation. Then he builds a plan of attack.

***

“All right chickendick, it’s break time.”

He Tian looks up from his reports, or accounts, or whatever job thing he’s doing (Mo still doesn't really know what He Tian really does). The man looks simultaneously exhausted, yet energized. He's probably slept five hours in five days. 

“I need to finished these or my brother dearest brother will murder me in cold blood. Or worse, make Qiu follow me around until I do it for him."

“I’ll tell your brother it’s on my authority as the fire extinguisher.” He Tian makes a what-the-fuck face that Mo ignores in favor of his plan. “Alright, I got three options for you.”

“You’re assigning me activities now?” is the dry response. “Is this preschool?”

Out of obligation, Mo says, “Fuck you.” And then; “Your options are: we paint the living room, we paint the dining room, or we paint your room.”

“And why is that little Mo?”

“Because this place has no personality. It’s straight out of a minimalist decor catalog. We're living in fucking liminal space and it’s depressing as fuck.”

“I'm intrigued. How many minimalist decor catalogs have you read Mo?”

“Can you not be an asshole for, like, five minutes?!"

“I think I’m physically incapable, I hear it's a serious medical condition.”

“Whatever." Mo crosses his arms and adopts his most hostile scowl. "Make a choice.”

“If I pick to paint my room, will you clean it too?”

“The fuck do you think?”

“Worth a shot.”

Somehow, Mo still ends up the one to clean He Tian's room. 

He Tian fucking revels in the simple pleasure of choosing a color. He takes fucking forever, flip flopping from day to day. At one point, he spends over an hour needling Mo into helping him pick. Mo caves just to get some fucking peace, then He Tian ignores the hard won opinion, seemingly just because he can. 

Mo still helps He Tian paint the room grey, and of course he fucking picks _grey,_ but it’s a soft, dove grey Mo has to admit is pretty nice. It’s better than the stark white, that’s for sure. 

He Tian seems thrilled with the result. Once started, He Tian goes in 150%. Mo reckons it’s a relief to channel his energy into controlling the space around him.

By the time He Tian’s mood stabilizes, the guy manages to repaint the entire house– sans Mo's room. The master bathroom gets a coat of pastel coral that’s frankly hideous. Mo's glad he never has to look at it. The second bathroom ends up a muted sunshine. The living room remains white, but now more ivory then the previous sterile hospital tone, and he adds an accent wall of lambent aero blue-green. The dining room is given a coat of paint that reminds Mo of the washed out purple-grey of building storm clouds. He Tian graciously let Mo pick the color in the kitchen since it's ‘his domain’ and He Tian happily covered the room in a pale, buttery yellow.

Mo's honestly impressed that his spontaneous idea is so effective.

***

Two such angry people should be incompatible. Two wrongs don't make a right. Two stubborns don’t make a compromise. It should be fire fighting fire– more destructive than helpful. It’s undeniable that the similarities _do_ often put them at odds, and yet– 

And yet.

***

“I just had the worst conversation in recent memory.” He Tian says blithely when Mo picks him up from He Cheng’s office. He immediately slings an arm around Mo’s shoulders, which Mo suffers through because He Tian has never been in such a good mood after a checkup. He tells himself it's for the sake of positive reinforcement.

“Isn’t that what you think every time you speak with your brother?”

“You know me so well Momo,” He Tian says with a dreamy little sigh. Mo jabs at He Tian with an elbow. “Little Mo! How can you just hit someone like that!” 

Mo flips him off.

“While that might be true,” He Tian says, continuing his previous subject. “This particular conversation was worse than normal.”

“Either say it or shut up, fuck!”

“My brother wanted to discuss,” He Tian makes air quotes. “The ramifications of my mood disorder and how to better structure my support network.” He makes a derisive noise. “I think he ate a DBT manual by mistake.”

“Your brother always sounds like he's fucking swallowed an instruction manual.” 

“Also true. It’s the indignity of this being the first he’s mentioned it, other than telling me to see a doctor. It only took him, what? Ten to fifteen years before he actually did some basic research?"

“Are you annoyed he brought it up, or annoyed that it took him so long?”

“Both!” He Tian says cheerily. “The simple reminder that he exists annoys me.”

“You’re the one who brought this up!” 

“My annoyance is canceled out by the sheer pleasure of your company,” He Tian is all cocky grin now, and he gives Mo's neck a teasing pinch. "I would suffer any number of tedious conversations with my brother as long as you remained at my side Momo.”

“Have you been reading shitty poetry or something?”

He Tian clears his throat. Oh fuck. Please, no.

“I ache! I yearn! I am undone without you by my side! My little Mo!” He Tian proclaims, way too loud. People on the street turn to look curiously at him– at _them._

“Shut up He Tian!” Mo hisses. “We’re in public! For fucks sake!” 

He Tian still keeps fucking going, if at a more reasonable volume, “My rare and radiant hearts desire, what wouldst I not give for the sake of a fuck. I would go to the ends of the earth for a single fuck, as long as thy–”

Mo slaps a hand over those smirking lips. “Say another word, and I’ll shove it up your ass.”

The hand over his mouth muffles He Tian’s words, but Mo still hears it clearly, and could have made an educated guess if not, because He Tian fucking waggles his eyebrows.

“Promise?”  


***

Who better to understand a person's awful energy than one of their own kind. Who better to give forgiveness than someone who knows intimately the shame of remorse. Who better to recognize that outrage, or sense an impending break, or potentially have the right words to talk it back down.

Maybe.

He Tian is no stranger to suffering what he cannot change. It’s possible he’s just as familiar with the language as Mo. Can understand it with no translation required. Perhaps he understands what it’s like to get knocked down. Knows what it costs a person to always _–always–_ get back up again.

Or maybe not. Mo’s not sure yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel the slow burn. We're starting to get real now. 👀👀👀 ((that's supposed to be a side eye emoji btw))  
> (Oh my god, ch 333. Hnnggg. It's only four pages and yet so much packed into it. The little kissies 💋 and He Tian actually apologizing? And respecting boundaries? Two of my fav Mo/Tian relationship kinks.)
> 
> Quick reference:  
> Bipolar: aka manic depressive or Bipolar Affective Disorder. A mood disorder characterized by extreme mood swings. Bipolar 1 is considered more severe in moodswings, though usually last for shorter duration. Bipolar 2 is less extreme in mood in that those suffering predominately only experience hypo-manic (less severe) ups, while the duration of both their up and down episodes generally last longer.  
> Comorbid: refers to disorders that often coexistent with each other (from a mental health stand point), often the primary condition is a mood disorder: Bipolar, Depressive, Anxiety, etc.  
> Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD): a personality disorder characterized by a pattern of extreme moods and behavior. Experience intense episodes of anger, depression, anxiety, and other emotions that seem disproportionate in comparison to the situation. Often results in impulsive actions and problems in relationships or appear erratic. Comorbid with other mood disorders.  
> Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED): An emotional/behavior disorder characterized by sudden episodes of impulsive, aggressive, angry verbal outbursts, sometimes violent behavior, in which the reaction seems grossly out of proportion to the situation. Outburst generally last less than an hour and are followed by extreme remorse for their behavior. Comorbid with other mood disorders {This is the only one I have no direct experience with, and therefor may be misrepresenting}.  
> Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT): a type of cognitive behavior therapy that is favored as a treatment for personality disorders and addiction issues.  
> I think that about covers it? Feel free to hit me up if you have other questions or opinion on the matter (as long as it's constructive and not simply critical).


	4. vii, ix, and x

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A jealous He Tian appears, knifeplay is kink shamed, and people seriously need to stay in their lane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time, no post my friends! But your girl is back and at it again. I had to like, actually decide how the plot was going to go, before it just turned into a character study or whatever. There's actually two completely different versions of the chapter and how it plays out, which is part of why it took me so long. I decided to go with this one, because the other one was more gritty/violent/depressing and that just isn't the vibe I'm going for I decided.

* * *

**viii. insecurity**

In an un-fucked world, escorting his client to a bar not associated with a syndicate would be a regular, normal thing. Unfortunately, this is not the case. 

Going out with Jian Yi and Zhan Xi comes with an unfortunate side effect. It means they can’t patronize a mob establishment. Even if Jian Yi didn’t avoid mafia things on principle, they can’t exactly take Zhan Xi into one of those places. It doesn’t matter that everyone and their dog knows he’s halfway to married to Mister Jian’s son, the guy’s a fucking _criminal_ _phycologist_. So when Jian Yi insists they go out for a drink there's not much to be done about it. Saying no to Jian Yi when he _really_ wants something is futile. He’ll talk you into it eventually. Mo’s pretty sure this is how Jian Yi managed to bag Zhan Xi; persistent, unwavering affection that finally wore the man down. It's absolutely how he wrangled Mo into friendship.

In the world Mo inhabits, a civilian bar makes him more nervous. To him, letting his client wander among civilians is a greater safety risk. That the entire staff at this venue isn’t packing heat makes him edgy. Technically, the likelihood of someone trying to kill and/or maim He Tian, or even just having a deadly weapon with them, is significantly lower in a place like this. There’s got to be something deeply wrong with him if normal-people life makes him more nervous than gun toting criminals. 

It’s just that this is an environment full of people whose behaviors, motivations, and personalities Mo can’t totally understand. The mafia has been such an influential factor on his life, it’s become his comfort zone, the presence of things he knows. He understands what drives these kinds of people: rage, greed, hate, pride, ect.

What drives a person to become a doctor or a teacher or an officer worker, Mo hasn't a fucking clue.

At least it’s not just Mo on guard here. Qiu’s around too, easily slipping into the guise of a civilian, albeit a very buff man-hulk of a civilian. Mo last saw him hanging around at the bar just far enough away from their quarry not to warrant suspicion, flirting with a few ladies while he pretends at drinking a beer. Personally, Mo has tucked himself into a back corner with decent lines of sight. Far enough away that a tipsy Jian Yi won’t keep trying to drag him into socializing and make sad puppy faces at him.

No matter what his panic brain insists, the night has followed the normal pattern of behaviors: Jian Yi making friends with anyone in shouting distance, He Tian romancing any woman in smiling distance, and Zhan Xi’s doing that mixture of exasperated amusement he favors while keeping his lightweight boyfriend from getting plastered. There’s no one who sticks out as a threat, or anyone who sticks out as _too_ innocuous, but his limbic system is not so easily convinced by things like logic and hard facts, so he can’t stop himself from watching the flow of the crowd. The three random guys Jian Yi’s shooting pool with (and losing spectacularly) and the constant bevy of ladies approaching his client.

Watching from afar like this, Mo can sort of see why girls flock to He Tian. Classically handsome, tall and fit; but it's more than that. A pretty face doesn’t warrant the kind of attention He Tian gets. 

It’s the way he can make a person feel like they’re lifelong pals given twenty minutes and proper motivation. A sort of intuitive skill for understanding people’s feelings and knowing the exact things to say to get the response that he wants, masterful manipulation that He Tian seems to only use for the purpose of his own amusement.

It’s a good thing He Tian doesn’t have any psychopathic tendencies or a legitimate sadistic streak. He’d make for a scary good serial killer. 

Or, you know, a ruthless and powerful mobster.

It makes a kind of sense considering who He Tian is- his family, how his brain is wired. Mo thinks He Tian wouldn’t be so good at reading people if not for his BPD. All those strong emotions he harbors must give him a greater understanding of others and how emotions affect them. He would’ve grown up constantly feeling insecure, so he’d taught himself to see through the masks people like his brother wore. The mastery with which he contains and manipulates his own feelings would translate easily to making others dance to his own tune.

It’s nothing more simple or complex than a survival mechanism. A way of highjacking his disorder and making an adaptation out of dysfunction, taking the shitty cards life dealt him and figuring out how to use some piece of it to his benefit. Mo can respect that. 

He’s so caught up in his meta-bullshit that he misses what's right under his nose.

"Oh my God, I am so sorry!" Gasps a short brunette woman after she sloshes half her drink on Mo's right side. Her eyes are heavy lidded and small, but they get big in shock when they look up and find the man she’s just drenched. At least, Mo assumes it's about his default scowl setting and how that makes him look perpetually pissed that’s got her looking like a deer in headlights.

"Sorry!" She squeaks, as if she expects Mo to like, punch her or something. "I'm so sorry! I was running from this guy, he was being sketch, and I just– !"

She keeps rambling an explanation, but Mo’s focus isn’t on the words anymore. She’s short enough he doesn’t have to make an effort to look over her head and see if he can spot the guy. 

Yep, right there, creepier alert. You can see it just by looking– his behavior, the way he holds himself, the look in his eyes.

Mo gives that fucker a particularly nasty look, the kind that has made grown men piss themselves. It sends the piece of shit packing post-fucking-haste.

"Relax, it's fine," he says tersely. "He's gone now."

The lady's head whips around to look, "He is?"

"Yeah, my face has that effect on people."

The woman giggles, then bites her lip. She looks up at Mo through her lashes, checking to see if he’s mad she'd laughed. When Mo doesn't snap at her, she tucks her hair behind an ear and smiles shyly. "Well, thanks. And I am sorry about spilling my drink on you like that.” She hesitates, then says, “Can I buy you one? As a thank-you-slash-apology." 

"Uhhh…" Mo's not really sure how to turn her down. This isn’t a situation he’s dealt with before; chatting with a civilian while on the clock. He’s not sure how to explain or if he even should. 

"I'm DD,” is what he ends up saying, which is technically true.

"Protective and responsible," she comments, suddenly a little closer now, and she sounds… approving? 

Oh. Oops. 

It's been so long since someone has flirted with him, Mo hadn't clocked it. He's gotten too used to He Tian's absurd brand of play-fight-flirting apparently. Not that it's ever been a common occurrence for him to be approached, but still.

"Maybe next time," continues the poor woman, touching his non-wet arm tentatively as she talks. "I could give you my number and–" 

She halts mid sentence and blinks. Her sudden confusion confuses Mo in turn, until he feels a heavy, familiar arm drape over his shoulders. He still startles at the touch, not having heard He Tian approach at all. 

He whips his head around to demand, “Where the fuck did you come from?!”

“Around,” he says vaguely, then flashes one of his bright, deceptively friendly smiles at the woman. “Is this a friend of yours little Mo?” 

“Mind your own business,” he grumbles, feeling embarrassed at being caught, and angry that he’s embarrassed. There’s no reason he should be, he’s just having a fucking conversation. 

“I was just apologizing to your… friend here.” The woman says, and Mo is painfully aware of the pause’s implied question. She apparently isn’t fooled by He Tian’s charade –good instincts on this girl– because she’s gone back to her early hesitancy. “I accidentally spilled my drink on him trying to escape this other guy.”

“He was a creep. You could tell just by look’n at him,” Mo says defensively– and fuck, why is he defensive? There's nothing to even be defensive over.

Damn He Tian. He makes everything so fucking complicated. Damn him for making Mo feel useless, confusing things.

“You ran him off real quick though,” she says to Mo– wait, is it just Mo, or is she giving him a side eye right now? What's that even supposed to mean? “It was impressive.”

“Despite his scowl-y face, our Momo is a bit of a softy,” He Tian agrees, and while he sounds pleasant and politely chatty, the arm slung around Mo’s shoulders switches to wrapping around his waist. A ridiculous, retaliatory gesture that, when combined with the ‘our’ and the nickname, insinuates certain things. Things He Tian has no right to be insinuating.

“Well, I should get back to my friends before they start worrying,” the woman says, because it’s not like He Tian’s being subtle with his back-the-fuck-off attitude. Still, she adds a last, “Thanks for the assist, it was nice chatting. Maybe I’ll see you around?”

“Maybe,” He Tian says; all smiles; all bullshit. “Ta-ta for now.”

***

Like most people, He Tian seems to act under the generic assumption of Mo’s sexuality being on the straight and narrow. All the invasive questions he’s plied Mo with have always been about women. There’s the absurd flirting on He Tian’s part, but that’s more designed to annoy than anything else.

This suits Mo just fine, thanks. If he wants to suck a dick, then that’s between him and whoever’s dick he’s sucking.

***

“Ta-ta for now?” Mo hisses after the woman disappears into the jumble of bodies. “Are you fucking kidding me? And why were you being an extra special amount of shitty to her?” 

“So eager to run into someone else’s embrace?” He Tian teases wickedly. Which absolutely didn’t answer any of Mo’s questions– also, _what the fuck?_

“Do you have shit in your brain?” Mo demands after recovering from a wave of outraged spluttering. “She was a nice girl and I was helping her out! Is that fuck’n crime now?” 

“It’s so rare for you to compliment someone. Why don’t you ever compliment me Momo?”

Of course that’s what he fixates on. It always comes down to that in the end. Someone else is the center of his attention for all of a minute and He Tian’s swooping in, like he’s got some fucking spidey-sense shit for knowing exactly who in the room is looking at him and who isn’t. 

“That’d mean I’d actually have to like something about you.”

“You like the feedback I give on the new recipes you try," He Tian points out.

The worst part is, he doesn't even sound smug about it. Like it's just facts. Which, alright, He Tian’s got him there. But still.

“You’re fully capable of complimenting yourself, I don’t see why you need me to say shit.”

“A little validation every now and then does the soul good.”

“I’m not adding to your overinflated ego, you’ve got plenty of women lined up for that already.”

“Men too,” He Tian says with a shady little smirk.

Mo doesn’t get why He Tian even cares about that, it's not like he gets approached by men unless their at a gay bar or something, and they haven't been to one in... god, months probably, and if he lets himself think about it more, he'd realize they haven't been since he got stabbed. He absolutely doesn't think about it more though. Certainly not. 

“Bully for you.” Mo takes a different track, because chances are high that He Tian's going to make this a sex thing, and he’s even less in the mood for being mock-propositioned than usual. “Try going an hour without demanding to be the center of everyone’s attention and maybe I’ll consider complimenting you.” 

He Tian is silent, and when Mo looks up at him to figure out if he’s actually taking Mo seriously, he finds He Tian watching him. Which isn’t anything new, but there’s something different about it. It almost feels heavy on his skin, a dark smoke that sits on his nerves like the smell of ash that always lingers around He Tian. And for one terrible moment, Mo thinks He Tian is going to kiss him. 

The attraction festering in Mo’s medial prefrontal cortex isn’t enough to overcome the larger impact of his fight-flight response, and if those lips get anywhere near his, He Tian’s balls will be in danger of getting crushed.

But the moment is gone in an eyeblink. What Mo had mistaken for a spark of desire in the dim light of the bar turns out to be just the unholy glint of trouble.

“Little Mo, if I were a girl, you'd fall immediately in love with me, wouldn't you?” 

Yeah, same old same old.

Mo stomps down hard on the burst of dread his amygdala had unhelpfully supplied. Then he stomps down hard on He Tian’s instep. 

"Don't be so fucking conceited," he snaps, striding away while He Tian’s distracted by the unexpected burst of pain in his foot.

***

He wouldn’t put it past the asshole to think that kissing him randomly in the middle of public would be absolutely _hilarious_ , without considering the ramifications of startling Mo. It’s a damn good thing He Tian didn’t try it, because Mo’s pretty sure he would’ve kneed the bastard in the balls so hard his great-great grandkids would’ve felt it. Assuming he’d still be able to have kids. 

It’d be pretty embarrassing to explain to He Cheng.

_Your little brother tried to kiss me and now you’ll never be an uncle. Sorry not sorry._

That’d go over spectacularly, Mo’s sure. 

* * *

**iv. uneventful attack**

“You– you’re one of that bastard’s sons, aren’t ‘cha?” The man says raggedly, and even from a distance Mo can tell the veins on the guy's face are overly prominent and his eyes are all kinds of fucked up. Amphetamines probably, maybe coke. 

He’s got a gun

He pulls the trigger. _Bang_. No hesitation. 

Mo hadn’t hesitated either. He’s already there, shoving the man’s wrist up and twisting it away. His ears are ringing like a bitch, but the bullet goes skyward, lodging in the roof of the parking garage. 

The guy is snarling at the pain of Mo forcing his wrist into an unnatural angle, and the gun clatters to the floor. Spit and filth fly from the man's mouth; cursing at Mo, at He Tian, at He Tian’s father. Mostly the last one. 

It’s a pretty routine lone-gunman. The handgun on the floor is a cheap piece of crap, the guy probably bought it off whoever sold him the drugs. Not a merc or a hit, just some poor piece of shit whose life had gotten screwed over. Mo can empathize with that.

He’ll have to report this to He Cheng, and their father’s retribution will doubtless be swift, decisive, and extraordinarily painful. It would probably be kinder if Mo just put the man down now.

Instead, Mo breaks the man’s arm and he falls to the floor, whimpering as he cradles his injured arm. Dutifully, he pulls out the knife he carries and slices the back of one of the man's ankles, right through the tendon so he won’t be walking again any time soon. 

“Get in the car, He Tian,” Mo says curtly as he wipes the knife clean on the downed man’s jacket. “The backseat this time. I’m not in the mood to fucking argue right now.”

“I don’t like being given direction,” replies the absolute shithead.

Mo closes his eyes and counts to ten. Once he’s sure he won’t either start screaming or throw up, he pins He Tian with the most hostile glare in his repertoire. 

He Tian looks him over with a quirked brow, then shrugs. “Well, knifeplay really isn’t my thing, so I guess I might as well.”

Mo ignores his client –just like he tries to ignore the bile rising in his throat, the way _knifeplay_ keeps echoing around in his head– and pulls out his phone. He shoots He Cheng a message on the location of the would-be murder while He Tian slips into the backseat.

Mo makes himself look at the man on the floor. A victim of circumstance in an unfair world. It’s shit like this that leaves his mouth sour and his heart heavy with the knowledge of exactly what kind of world he’s working in. What kind of person he has to fight tooth and nail from becoming. Has maybe already lost himself to anyways.

Sometimes you have to be meaner than your demons to survive them.

Mo might not be the one to pull the trigger, he might not be the one to kill the guy, but he’s complicit. He has blood on his hands, both literal and metaphorical, and he can’t let himself forget it. If Mo’s life had gone slightly different, it could have easily been him bleeding out on the concrete floor. It could still be him, the day his luck finally runs out. This is the way things go when you get tangled up in the mob. 

He turns away and gets in the car. He has to take a moment to just sit in the front seat, eyes closed as he breathes, focuses on the feel of leather under his hands where he grips the steering wheel. He Tian stays blessedly quiet while Mo fights back the worst of the memories brought up by blood and guilt. It doesn’t take long. Mo’s plenty practiced at it.

He checks the rearview mirror to see what kind of assessment He Tian has made of the odd pause, only to find that he isn’t doing the weird staring thing for once. He’s on his phone, like it’s perfectly normal for Mo to sit in the driver's seat for five solid minutes before starting the car.

“Can we have wonton soup for dinner?” He Tian asks when they pull out of the garage, which is the closest to a reaction Mo ever gets.

***

Mo should hate the mafia.

His family lost their restaurant to the mob. He lost his father to them. He and his mother lived in poverty because of them. He went hungry. He lived on the street. He lost his teen years, his scruples, and eventually his future. Under the knife of She Li’s transition from youth gang to street gang, from the lower city district to dominating Hangzhou, Mo had started to lose any sense of self. He lost Jian Yi to them, and Zhan Xi by extension.

Mo should hate the mafia.

But it’s all he knows. It’s all he’s good at. 

***

_New message from: Current Contract_

Current Contract 

You didn’t kill him.

Mo Guanshan 

Yes?

Current Contract 

Why not?

Mo Guanshan 

Do you want the list alphabetically or by likelihood?

He could’ve been a son of or related to another group's important men

Or had links to other groups

Or he had information you were looking for

Or he owes a debt

If none of those

Then killing him later is still much easier then unkilling him

Not gonna chance a mistake due to lack of knowledge

Current Contract 

My brother is right.

You’re much smarter than you look.

Mo stares at his phone. He doesn’t know how to take that. Doesn’t know if He Cheng is attempting to compliment him, if this is the man’s version of humor, or what. So he doesn’t respond.

Instead, he hauls himself off the bed and sticks his head out the door to his room to yell, “If I hear you’ve been gossiping about me with your dickhead brother again, I’mma kick your teeth out and force feed ‘em back to you!”

He Tian’s resulting laugh is loud and long.

* * *

**x. offroading not optional**

Mo still doesn’t really know what He Tian’s job is.

He seems like a glorified accountant as far as Mo can tell. Or maybe a record keeper. Stuff that involves money. Lots of meticulously sorted file cabinets. Paper work shit. 

His room might be a permanent disaster, but He Tian is surprisingly organized when it comes to work– if incredibly lazy about getting shit done. Actually, if Mo thinks about it, He Tian’s organized in all other aspects of his life. 

Maybe not so surprising. He is a control freak after all.

***

“Fuck, I hate this city's princeling clique,” He Tian complains as soon as Mo closes the door behind him, walks through the drizzle or rain to the divers side, and gets in on the other side. “My brother owes me big for dumping the city secretary on me.”

Out of the public eye now now, He Tian’s slouching in the passenger seat. He pops the top three buttons on his shirt, and while he sounds like his usual annoying self, the meeting has definitely worn on him. Mo hadn’t even bothered trying to get him to sit in the back.

“You _are_ a princeling, you hypocrite,” Mo reminds him, unimpressed. 

He Tian leans over the console, slouch gone as he presses into Mo’s space. 

Fuck, how did this guy seem to acquire an extra foot of height when he loomed?

“I am myself,” He Tian says, face all blandly pleasant, and his breath laced with the wine he’d been drinking. “Don’t relate me to anything else. Okay?”

“Fuck! Don’t suddenly come so close!” Mo snaps back, covering his alarm with anger and a scowl. He doesn’t shove He Tian away, and if they hadn’t been in the car Mo would’ve taken several back from that loaded gun of a smile.

He Tian doesn’t budge at first, then he settles back on his side of the car and his smirk reappears. All the polite anger that had struck like lightning vanishes between eye blinks. The only remnant is the afterimage on the inside of Mo’s eyelids as proof of anything else.

Mo resettles himself and starts the car. He’s not looking forward to the drive back. Single lane, steep grade, with a few too many blind turns. In the rain. 

The dinner had been at some fancy seafood restaurant outside the city and right up on one a coastal cliff, boasting astounding views of the ocean. Exclusive in it’s patronage, it did it’s best to curtail the average riff-raff. Which means it was a pain in the ass to get to.

Worst of all, the food was bland as hell.

Usually, Mo avoids questions, but he’s willing to make an exception if it will keep He Tian from getting all smile-ly and threatening. “How did you even end up with this shit?” He asks as he pulls out of the parking lot. “And what idiot would tap a chickendick like you as the replacement?”

“I’ll have you know, I’m a perfect substitute; charming, suave, not to mention devilishly handsome. Frankly, I’m a better choice than my glacier of a brother, which is both my blessing and my curse.” 

“Right,” drawls Mo.

“Your doubt wounds me Momo. I spent the entire evening patiently listening to the Committee Secretary talk about his ex-wife, his daughters, and his girlfriend – who is almost the same age as his eldest daughter, I’ll have you know. Which is par for the course creepy, but he was also not-so-subtly trying to set me up with her –his daughter, not his girlfriend. He even made a comment about how I’d be an ideal son-in-law. It was tortuous, Momo, sheer torture.” 

“What, you don’t wanna add his daughters to your harem?” 

This seems to delight He Tian, who reaches out and ruffles his hair. “Little Mo, are you jealous?”

Mo’s hit with a burst of hot-cold dread. Fuck, did He Tian finally figure out? Then he realizes He Tian’s actually meaning: asking if he’s jealous of the attention He Tian gets from women. 

“Fuck no,” Mo scoffs, hoping that in the dimness of the overcast night and darkness of the car, his embarrassed flush is hidden. “A bunch of women buzzing around? Sounds fucking annoying. I get enough of that shit from you anyways.” 

He Tian takes Mo’s complaints about his workplace as an opportunity to share the things that are annoying him at work too. He prattles on about the new responsibilities He Cheng has been saddling him with, that, for a bunch of wily sneaks, the mafia is painfully predictable. Mostly he laments the increased number of meetings to attend. “Mafia business shouldn’t start until after 11.” 

Mo’s only half listening, but to him it sounds like He Cheng’s trying to wrangle his brother into a more active position. Not just file cabinets and finance, but rubbing elbows with the elite. Mo reckons that the He’s are looking to bring He Tian further into the fold. Train him up and get him properly initiated and all that. It’d explain why He Cheng has stuck his brother with this business dinner.

Mo has to wonder though: how are they getting He Tian to actually _do_ any of it?

***

The He’s set up in Shanghai is small, more like an embassy in Jian country. What operations they do conduct in the city is largely insignificant by comparison.

Could explain why He Tian –who looks at any and all responsibility and just nopes off into the sunset– is allowed to hold a position that Mo would normally classify as important.

***

As the rain outside picks up from a drizzle to an insistent pattering, Mo slows. Wary of the slick road, the twisting freeway, and occasional cliffsides. The only other drivers stupid enough to be out on the road are a pair of SUV’s.

“Those are two very _un_ suspicious cars just behind us,” He Tian comments idly, absorbed in dicking around on his phone now. “Two coincidentally identical cars. Who have most certainly _not_ been following us since we left the restaurant.”

Yes, He Tian. Mo had noticed, fuck you very much.

Because it’s not just two identical cars. It’s the tinted windows, the black paint, the false license plates, and that one of them is just far back enough most people wouldn't notice it. A decent strategy, except for how they’re on a remote stretch of highway, which makes it fucking obvious.

Just as the first car starts riding their ass, the second trailing behind turns it’s brights on in a blinding pop of light and floors it. That second car comes up alongside them, angling in front of He Tian’s car, and they start pressing in closer and closer. Trying to cut them off, threatening to collide, with the first car ruining any chance of breaking.

“Shit, they’re gonna try’n to run us off the road.”

“Who do these assholes think they’re working for, Cheung Tze-Keung?” He Tian sounds derisive, and he’s still fucking tapping away, probably sending Jian Yi a text. Something like: _lmao about to get kidnapped by some Big Spender knock off. If they keep me hostage in a fridge imma laugh at them until they die of embarrassment,_ and then a string of absurd emoji’s. 

Mo isn’t as unimpressed. Maybe it’s a cliche, but as far as kidnapping strategies go, this is a tried and true method, and there’s no way to tell who’s backing this. If Mo can get He Tian out of this situation unscathed, shit is going to get _complicated._ He doesn’t bother to consider the alternative, because it’ll be over his dead body.

“You better have your gear,” Mo warns as he debates how to shake the cars starting to close in on them. He wastes a moment to bemoan He Tian's ridiculous luxury car instead of a normal, mob-standard SUV with four wheel drive. 

“Welllll...” He Tian drawls out. Mo inhales sharply, about to lose the tenuous control of his temper when He Tian adds, “That was a joke, idiot."

Mo grits his teeth, unclenching his hands from the wheel carefully. The way He Tian always makes light of serious situations is really not appreciated. “Put it on.”

Thankfully, He Tian keeps any snark to himself, and obediently hauls his bulletproof-vest on over his button down and even buckles his seatbelt without a reminder. 

“Saddle up sunshine,” Mo says, then jerks the steering wheel to the side hard.

The car slides off the paved road and onto the shoulder in a half-controlled skid. Mo breaks hard, and the car goes hydroplaning until he has it mostly facing the opposite direction. He eases off the break, swerving forward, and accelerates as quickly as he can without sending them spinning out again.

There's no off-roading it in this shitty, overpriced car, so the only thing to do is get them back to the shitty, overpriced restaurant– which is looking a whole lot less shitty as the cars start outright tailing them.

"Three of them now," He Tian comments, voice somehow steady. Mo checks his mirror more carefully, and yeah, that's definitely three cars. Damn. 

“Almost there,” Mo mutters under his breath. He can make out the silhouette of the restaurant's roof arching over the treetops now. “Almost there, almost there, _almost there_.”

Two cars are parked in a makeshift barricade across both lanes, and Mo is keenly aware of just how utterly fucked they are as he once again sends the car veering off the road.

Thank fuck they don’t run headlong into the vehicle barricade, but it’s a near thing. They do end up half stopped, half crashed in a small clearing of bushes and short trees nearby. 

“Whoever taught you to drive should be given an award, then banned from getting behind a wheel ever again." The playful dig comes out a little strained but He Tian retains the same forced calmness as before. 

Mo unbuckles, throws the parking brake on, and feels at the outline of his own handgun for some modicum of comfort. Not that his Five-seveN will be able to do much against an ocean of goons with automatic rifles, but still. 

One gun is better than none gun.

“Plan?” He Tian prompts, eyeing the cars converging on them. A line of enemy automotives and what’s probably an unwanted cliffside dive keeping them boxed in. 

“Get the handgun stashed in the glove box.” Mo directs, frantically wracking every nook and cranny of his brain for some way to get his client out of this alive and, ideally, not in the hands of the men pouring out of the car and into the rain– cookie-cutter mafia goons in a rainbow of blacks.

“There’s a gun in my car!?” He Tian sounds offended. This is ludicrous coming from a man whose family is undoubtedly involved in gun smuggling, and Mo ignores it.

“When they ask us to step out, open your door, but stay inside the car. Be ready to shut it if something goes wrong. If it does, climb into the back seat and lay on the floor.”

“What constitutes going wrong?”

“Take a fucking guess,” Mo hisses at his client. Then he opens his door and steps out of the car.

***

He Tian does as Mo says. 

He cracks the door open, and lets his head peek out –so they know he’s here or whatever– as Mo comes around to his side of the car. It effectively puts him between He Tian and the prepped firing squad. 

He Tian isn’t all that fond of having guns pointed his way. Or of guns in general. More than that, he isn’t fond of them being pointed at people _because_ of him. This isn’t a hit. No point in getting them out of the car for that. Easier to just ram the car off the road and send him and the car plummeting into the sea. No guns, no mess, no loose ends. But that doesn’t mean these flunkies will hesitate to shoot Mo who, to these men, is a nobody.

He Tian sits through the expected talking and gun waving, scheming as he waits through the practically scripted demands –god, everyone in the mafia is so fucking predictable, would it kill them to try something new and exciting every one in a while? His own plot fully formulated, he gets to spend some time appreciating little Mo being all belligerent and contrary and just generally throwing a wrench into the opposition's plans. He does _so_ enjoy watching the feisty redhead antagonize people, but the contentious circumstance puts a serious damper on it. The flunkies are sliding from agitated to increasingly aggravated by Mo’s uncooperative attitude, but that’s okay, because He Tian out of patience anyways. 

It’s time to break with the plan. 

He’s about ready to get out of the car and blatantly parade himself in front of the clump of identical morons and their identical guns and their identical cars. He’ll promise to cooperate, be a good boy and let them stuff him in a fridge without putting up a fight– on the condition Mo is left alive and uninjured. He’ll also promise to personally ensure that Mr. Jian tracks every single one of them down before having his father dispose of their corpses one by one if they touch a hair on that fluffy, red head.

Got to stay on-brand after all. 

He steps out, his speech ready to go, when something catches his attention. A glint of movement, like the sun reflecting off a phone screen, a light on a mirror, or something like that. Only, it’s not movement at all. Maybe it’s more a sensation, a sort of sixth sense. Then again, maybe not. Perhaps it’s his intimate familiarity with near-death and close calls. He Tian really can’t say for sure, but he also doesn’t linger on it, more preoccupied by what he does know.

Because what he knows is that there’s something red on Mo’s forehead. 

And it _isn’t_ his hair. 

***

Out of nowhere, He Tian fucking tackles him. 

The force behind it takes Mo off his feet and they go crashing out into the brush, and the momentum sends them tumbling down the steep incline from the small clearing, out to the cliffline. It’s only later that Mo connects the distant, dull cracking sound with the bullet that’d almost lodged itself in his skull.

By some miracle, their jumble of limbs comes to a lurching halt just short of plummeting off the edge and into the sea. Mo ends up slamming into his personal He-Tian-shaped landing pad. He must’ve jammed his diaphragm somehow, because it knocks the air out of He Tian’s lungs. If the gasping, choked noises he’s making are anything to go by at least. 

“What the fuck!” He shouts at He Tian, flailing and disoriented. 

They’d ended up snared in some large, unfamiliar shrub-plant apparently. Mo works to separate himself from the tangle of branches. Then tries to stand, fails, and ends up face planting in the soupy mud. 

Rolling over onto his back, he spits gritty soil from his mouth. “What the fuck!” he yells again, less at He Tian and more at the entire fucking situation.

Once he’s finally gotten his feet under him, Mo moves to do a quick once over of his client. 

Crouching carefully next to his client to see better, Mo’s first assessment is that He Tian’s definitely more snarled up in their shrubby savior than Mo had been. More importantly, he’s breathing and has a pulse. 

Not dead? Check.

There’s no obviously broken bones, no branches impaling him, no bullet holes or excessive bleeding wounds, though they’re both got plenty of small, superficial scratches from their hillside sprawling. 

No fatal injuries? Check. 

“You okay?” Mo asks.

He Tian blinks up at Mo, looking a little bewildered, but cognizant. 

“When I said I would sweep you off your feet,” He says with a wheezy little laugh. “This isn’t what I had in mind.”

Conscious? Check. Mental faculties? Questionable. That’s not exactly new though, so Mo drops his concern over potential brain damage. Or, more accurately, over the possibility of freshly acquired brain damage. 

If it’s not a fatal injury, then they’ve got bigger problems just up the hill. Problems with guns. 

Uncertainty sets in, and Mo can taste the tang of copper and winces, having unconsciously gone to bite his lip, only to find it already split.

It’s hard to say what the best next move is.

Option one: Mo makes a distraction to lead the goons off, hopefully allowing He Tian to safely backtrack to the restaurant and call his brother. 

Option two: Mo stays with He Tian, and hopes that they don’t get caught by the searching goons as they hike to the restaurant.

“I have to go back and assess, and you need to get out of that fucking bush. If I’m not back in ten, then you walk your ass back up to the restaurant. It can’t be more than a fifteen minute walk. Stay off the road and under cover. Call your brother. Got it?”

“I’m not going to leave you to–”

“No time,” Mo interrupts. “We can argue about it after we get out of this.” 

Mo doesn’t wait for a reply. He scrabbles his way up through the brush, dodging trees and their roots, ignoring the slap and pull of branches. The ground is sloppy, the soil loose, and Mo nearly loses his footing so many fucking times as he makes his way back to the car.

He slows as he gets close. Ducking down low, moving from cover to cover as he sneaks back. He comes at the clearing from an angle, hopes that the goon squad is expecting him to come back the way they went. He prays the sound of the rain covers any rustling branches or the crunch of twigs and leaves underfoot. 

Mo silently slides behind a large tree at the edge of the clearing, the trunk twice as thick around as Mo himself. Slowly, with deliberate caution and trying to limit the likelihood of any sudden motion being spotted, he peaks around the trunk.

They're gone. 

The men, their guns, their cars. They’re not there. Other than He Tian’s fucked up car and two bodies shot execution style, it looks as though nothing even happened. All that remains are tier tracks and some footprints. Soon they’ll be gone too, washed away in the rain.

“Fuck,” Mo curses under his breath. Then again, louder this time, “Fuck!”

***

It's obvious He Tian wants something from him. He wouldn't show so much interest in a nobody like him otherwise. He sure as hell wouldn’t jump in front of gunfire either. 

Now if only Mo could only just figure out what the hell that is.

***

Mo returns to find that He Tian hasn’t been able to extricate himself from the shrub ensnaring him on his lonesome. The man is also less than cheerful about Mo ‘deserting him’, and it’s with a soundtrack of passive-aggressive complaints that Mo is finally able to fish out his unsteady client. His movements are uncoordinated, and Mo’s forced to assist, an arm draped around his shoulders in a parody of He Tian’s usual clinging needed to keep him up right. 

“Those thugs?” He Tian asks once they start moving –limping really– up the obstacle course of mud, roots, and uneven ground.

“Two dead, rest are gone,” Mo grunts out through the exertion of hauling the other man. Damn, he’d forgotten just how fucking heavy this chickendick is. “Not my work though. Whatever happened, happened fast, 'cause everything but the two deceased were already gone by the time I backtracked from you nearly body-checking us off a fucking cliff.”

“I think you mean; when you abandoned me after I saved your life.” 

Mo has _a lot_ of things he wants to say on that subject, but he bites his tongue. Literally, because now’s not the time or place, and he needs the sharp reminder of his priorities. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He asks instead. “Other than your normal brain broke.”

“Funny you should mention that,” He Tian wheezes as they slip-slide their way up a particularly steep slope, and Mo’s basically dragging the man at this point. “Given the dizziness, blurry vision, and ringing in my ears, I may possibly be concussed.”

“Damn,” Mo says.

They wind their way up through the last stretch of the trek and Mo’s starting to worry he might have to drag He Tian all the way up to the restaurant. He hopes He Tian’s phone is in better shape than his own, because that trip down the hill had rendered Mo’s to scrap. 

They reach the top of the rise to find black SUV’s parked in the clearing again, and for one gut-wrenching second, Mo thinks the goon squad is back. That they’re both about to get super dead. 

Then he recognizes some of the men milling around and it clicks.

“The hell are they doing here?” Mo blurts. 

A few of the guys closest to them hear it, and when they catch sight of the two of them, they start exclaiming things. Their gruff voices overlap into a chaos of unintelligible babbling until everyone in a five mile radius must know where they are. One of the lackey’s scuttles off and the rest of He Cheng’s men converge on them in a protective ring of muscle mass. 

“He Tian, how are they here?” Mo says, insistent.

“Hmm?” He Tian flops his head to the side to look at him. He blinks in a few rapid-fire bursts, like the motion of turning his head to look was enough to disorient him. “Oh, right– I texted my brother when I saw we were being followed, and again before you showed off your stunt driving.”

“ _You_ texted _your brother?_ ” 

Mo wouldn’t have believed it, except for how a gap in the guards opens and He Cheng strides through, looking just as professional, unconcerned, and cut-throat as always. 

“Being dead would significantly impair my ability to give him hell,” He Tian replies, and he’s grinning at Mo as he speaks, but it’s leaning distinctly more towards loopy than the usual smirk and his eyes can’t seem to track quite right, eyeline slowly drifting towards the right before jerking back in to focus every so often. 

“Also, death sounds excruciatingly dull, and that’s just not my aesthetic,” He Tian tacks on for good measure as his brother zero’s in on them.

He Cheng gives them a clinical once over as he comes to a stop. They must be a pathetic sight: covered in mud and plant gunk, scraped up all to hell and with He Tian hanging off him with the coordination of your average drunk.

"What happened?” He Cheng asks with all the expressivity of a rock.

Before Mo can figure out where to even start their story, He Tian is ready with an instant answer. 

“Some Cheung Tze-Keung wannabes ran us off the road. There was a marksman hidden northwest of here that took a shot at us and we took cover. The wannabes took off, except the two fatalities. We don't know if that was the sniper or the thugs cleaning house afterwards.” He pauses to let them take that in, then adds; “Also, the city secretary tried to pimp his daughters out to me.” 

He Cheng looks to Mo– for confirmation?

“That’s the short version, but yeah, that’s basically it. We took a fall down that slope,” Mo jerks his head in the general direction, “to avoid gunfire and landed hard. He Tian has a concussion.”

“Just some internal bleeding, a little light brain bruising. Nothing that won’t come out in the wash,” He Tian says with _way_ too much cheer. 

Too well versed in his brother's antics, He Cheng doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he catches the eye of someone in the ring of men. Mo is startled to realize it’s brother Qiu. How had he missed the man-hulk towering over everyone?

Silently obedient as always, Qiu comes over and shoulders He Tian’s other side. That takes all the weight off Mo, which is a relief. He might’ve come out of the tumble more or less uninjured, but the adrenaline is wearing off and he’s suddenly aware of how tired his mind and body are, of the myriad stinging scraps he's covered in, of the bruises that must already be forming.

He Cheng gives them a curt nod and turns away. Maybe to get the run down from his lackeys on what they found, maybe to look over the two dead men, or maybe to get in one of the cars and head home now that he’s sure his brother isn’t about to kick the bucket.

“Why the long face brother? You almost look disappointed.” He Tian calls out, and Mo knows He Tian’s smirking by his tone. Yet it’s not the prodding tease. The taunt carries a sneer of derision and a promise of trouble.

“He Tian,” Mo hisses, yanking at the man’s arm in a bid at getting He Tian’s attention away from whatever shit he’s trying to start. He doesn’t even seem to notice, and it’s with all the dramatics of a Shakespearean actor addressing a crowd that he announces, “Oh, I know why!” 

“ _He Tian_.”

“My apologies,” he tells He Cheng, all stevia sweetness with a shark’s smile. “I’ll try harder to get myself killed the next time someone’s gunning for my head.” 

He Cheng turns back to face his brother, his voice is just as implacable as his expression. “Are you finished?”

He Tian opens his mouth to say god knows what else, but Mo gets right up in his face. One hand he slaps over He Tian’s mouth, and the other clenches at his shirt, like he can physically hold the man back from speaking. 

Mo has no idea what he’s going to say to He Tian, but the words come off his tongue with all the power of a cannon blast. “Do you have a setting that _doesn’t_ involve sticking your foot in your mouth?” 

He’s got _all_ of He Tian’s attention all right, and Mo intends to fucking keep it. 

“Stop it,” he orders, quieter now. “You have a fucking concussion. I’m fucking exhausted. Yell at your brother all you want later, but can we please go home now?” 

Something he says must strike a chord, because He Tian noticeably softens; and for all that they’re surrounded by others, He Tian’s looking at him like he’s the only person on the fucking planet, and Mo’s gut does an uncomfortable flip-flop.

“Are you acting spoiled little Mo?” He Tian’s tease is a complete one eighty from hateful to playful that’s disconcerting.

“You’re the one who’s spoiled!” Mo retorts lamely, but He Tian doesn’t rib him on the knee-jerk comeback.

“Yes I am,” he agrees without a pinch of shame, then looks thoughtful for a moment before announcing, “To whom it may concern, I’m starting to get nauseous.”

Brother Qiu, whom Mo had sort of forgotten was propping He Tian up, had said nothing during the exchange, basically as noteworthy as a brick wall. After He Tian’s pronouncement he still continues to say nothing, but his resignation becomes palpable in the night air. 

He Cheng doesn’t say anything either, but inclines his head towards one of the cars meaningfully and Qiu starts to half tows, half drags He Tian over. He Cheng follows and Mo bringing up the rear. They stop only once when He Tian’s nausea presents itself as warned. Qiu nearly ends up dropping him with a curse as the bland, expensive dinner is revisited. Then He Tian gets stuffed unceremoniously into the car. Mo joins him in the backseat, hopes he doesn’t get puked on by He Tian– again. The two of them end up waiting while He Cheng and Qiu have a murmured exchange out of hearing, then both get in the car. 

From the passenger's seat, He Cheng gets Mo to recount in full the tale of the cliffside chase and subsequent tumble. He Tian sporadically interjects unnecessary commentary, but Mo manages to get through most of it without too much trouble and only has to whack He Tian three times to get him to shut the fuck up.

The time comes for his least favorite part of the story, “–that’s when some dumb fucker with a death wish pushed me out of the line of fire, nearly taking the bullet himself in the process.” 

And that’s it– Mo’s patience for silently gritting his teeth on the matter is all used up. There’s no stopping him from glaring at his fucking client and giving him hell. “Seriously He Tian, I have enough problems keeping you un-murdered without you jumping in front of bullets! What the hell were you even thinking, pulling that stunt?"

He Tian just cocks his head and gives his most bullshit, charming grin. “I had to Momo, I promised I wouldn't let anything happen to you.”

Mo squints at him in incredulous disbelief. “The fuck? No you fuckn’ didn’t!”

“I most certainly did.” He Tian maintains with confidence, then pauses, “Though I’ll admit, you might’ve been unconscious at the time.”

“You– are you fuck'n brain broke?!” Mo hollers, about ready to start tearing his hair out.

“I’m assuming that’s a rhetorical question.”

“It’s my fuck’n job to protect you, not the other way around dipshit! Mind your own fuck’n business, acquire some basic self-preservation, and quit putting your dumbass in more danger than it already is!”

“No can do. I can’t just sit by and let someone snipe my future husband.” 

And then He Tian _winks_ at him and Mo loses the ability to make words do the thing, reduced to choking out irascible, incredulous noises. He wants nothing so desperately as to lie face down and self combust. Or shake He Tian until all the loose parts of his brain pop back into the right places. The concussion is really the only thing protecting him from the second option. 

While trying to restart his cerebellum’s ability to form coherent sentences, Mo catches He Cheng’s eyes flickering to his brother in the rearview mirror. He Tian meets the reflected gaze with an surprisingly eloquent arched brow. Something seems to pass between the siblings, a wordless conversation that leaves He Cheng pinching the bridge of his nose and He Tian looking smugly satisfied. 

“Back to the topic at hand,” He Cheng says a bit repressively around the same time Mo regains verbal competency. “The way the initial aggressors scattered after the shot from a distance missed points to there being two different interests: one intent on kidnap and ransom, one on elimination.”

Mo personally feels like that’s conjecture and doesn't account for the two dead men left behind, but he lets it go for now, because there’s one big thing that he’s having an issue squaring with. “Kidnapping I get, but a hit? Sure, He Tian’s a pain in the ass, but not enough to justify a bounty.” He Tian’s resulting _‘Rude, little Mo’_ might as well be white noise to the rest of them. “This isn’t like before; some overconfident assholes looking to get in good by whacking a kingpin’s kid when he falls right into their lap. And I can’t think of anything recent that might’ve spurred someone to put a price on He Tian’s head. Though I guess the going wasn't very high, considering how sloppy the job was.”

“There’s a possibility they thought we were He Cheng and a-Qiu, not realizing their intended target had a change of plans,” suggests He Tian. “That’d also explain why you were the one our friendly neighborhood sniper took a shot at.”

He doesn’t sound like he believes it. Neither does Mo. Could be the paranoia and hypervigilance at work, but there are too many things that don’t add up. 

When he’d first spotted the cars Mo had thought things were going to be complicated. Now though– he’s not sure what this mess is, just that it’s sure to be nothing good. Puzzle pieces that look like they should fit, but when laid together don’t line up no matter how he might nudge and wiggle.

Then there’s this new delusion He Tian has apparently developed. It could be the concussion talking, but the choice to stand in the line of fire hadn’t been. If He Tian thinks Mo’s going to stand for that then he’s _deeply fucking mistaken._

***

There are four people in the world who care about Mo. 

He wishes they wouldn’t, because despite better judgement, he inevitably starts to believe that if he falls, someone will catch him.

Because, while there are four people in the world who care about Mo, every single one of them has inevitably forsaken him. 

He falls and no one’s there. 

***

To He Tian’s disgust, he’s relegated to a wheelchair once he’s been admitted to the hospital. The same one Mo had been taken to that time he got stabbed he realizes as they briefly wait to be taken to an exam room. 

Brother Qiu doesn’t join them inside. Instead, he takes his post watching the front entrance instead. It’s generally noteworthy as Brother Qiu isn’t much of a conversationalist, and for such a huge guy he’s surprisingly easy to forget. He Tian makes some rude comments about excuses for skiving off and about Qiu’s general personality, but Mo is running on fumes and his backburnered anger at He Tian, and tunes out the increasingly petulant man-child. 

When a nurse tries to take Mo aside to be checked over he snaps and growls at the man. He Tian's given him enough grief for the next year in the last few hours, and he's not leaving Mo's line of sight until he sees a doctor. He Cheng places a calm hand on the nurse’s shoulder and politely requests, in that way that makes it obvious it isn’t really a request, that both Mo and He Tian be seen together. The man, frightened by Mo and unnerved by He Cheng, doesn’t hesitate to leg it out of there, which makes He Tian snicker.

They’re shown to a room, He Tian is given the bed, and He Cheng suggests/orders that Mo take the chair next to it. There’s definitely mafia money running through the veins of this hospital, because a doctor and a different nurse show up after almost no wait. 

The nurse, a big boned lady who looks to be about his mom’s age, checks him over with brusque efficiency. It doesn’t take much time for her to disinfect the scraps and scratches, though she insists on stitching a gash on the back of his left arm he hadn’t even noticed. Mo brushes her off, or tries to at least. This nurse has steel in her bones, and his mom had instilled in him a respect for all healthcare workers, so Mo shuts up and let’s her 'do the job I’m paid for dear'. 

He Cheng leaves with the doctor after He Tian is checked over, the man insuring the older He that his brother has nothing more serious than a moderate concussion. He starts going more in detail about care and post-discharge.

“I think it’s best if he stays the night, so we can monitor him.”

“I agree.” 

“He’ll have to take it easy and limit his screen time, but he should mostly be back to normal in ten days, possibly two weeks if he pushes it.”

“Which he will.” He Cheng confirms. That’s all he’s able to catch before they walk far enough to be out of ear shot. 

Mo lets his gaze fix on He Tian for the first time since they’d been ushered inside, taking in the pale cast of his skin, a livid bruise already blossoming on a sharp cheekbone, and how the eyes watching him in turn are still a little dazed but remain as intent as ever. He wonders what He Tian sees, if he too is cataloging the night’s accumulated bumps and bruises. 

“We need to talk,” Mo finally says.

He Tian arches a brow in that really condescending way he excels at. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“Fuck you. I’m being serious here, He Tian.”

“So am I.”

Mo ignores that nonsense. 

“I don’t know where the fuck you got this idea about protecting me, but that shit stops now. I’m _your_ guard, not the other way around.”

“I just don’t want you getting yourself killed for my sake.” 

There it is. The truth comes out.

“Your sake? Fuck, you really are self-centered, you know that?” Mo snaps back, and the irritation that’s been burning coals turns into something hotter and uglier, something meaner. “Has it crossed your self-absorbed, little mind that I don’t _want_ your help? I’m not gonna fucking thank you for this, ‘cause I can’t do my fucking job if you throw yourself in harmsway the second you see an opening.”

“Would you prefer I go back to endangering your life instead?”

Mo throws his hands up in exasperation, ignoring the sting of his newly stitched arm. “It’s always gotta be all about you, doesn’t it!"

“I’m not trying to make it about me,” he counters tersely as his eyebrows get all frowny-pulled-together. “Seriously? How am I the bad guy here? I’m just saying, when given the choice between Mo Lives and Mo Dies, I’d check the Mo Lives box.”

“And who the fuck gave you permission to choose asshole?"

He Tian looks honestly frustrated for once. He restlessly cards his finger through his hair, and Mo reckons he’s too tired and concussed to properly smother all his reactions. His subsequent protest comes threaded with vexation, “Dammit Mo, is me caring about you really so offensive?” 

Yes. Yes it is. He Tian doesn’t _get_ to care about him. This shit stops here and now, and Mo knows exactly what to say to put a wall between them. If that means exploiting his knowledge of He Tian’s vulnerabilities, so be it. 

“Care my ass! Don’t fuck with me He Tian.” Mo stands and snarls. He doesn’t even have to plan what to say; his anger has always known exactly where to aim for a critical hit. “We aren’t friends. You’re a contractual obligation. I work for your brother and you’re my client– that’s it. I’m not some stray you can take in–” He Tian flinches “–or some charity case. I’m not going to owe you for this. So you can take your savior complex and shove it up your ass, because _I don’t need you_.”

Mo wrestles himself to a halt. He's made his point, and now he needs to take a step back and give himself the time and space before he says something he _really_ regrets or devolves into throwing things or ends up yelling at top volume. 

He Tian’s face has arranged itself into the same blandly pleasant expression he had in the car a veritable forever of time ago, and Mo knows he’s going to make a joke out of it. He’ll tease Mo and try to lighten the mood to mask over the hurt, acting like he couldn’t care less because the alternative is to let it matter. But he doesn't this time, proving that He Tian is capable of keeping his foot out of his mouth every once and awhile. 

“Yeah, I know you don’t,” He Tian says, and he doesn’t shy away from meeting Mo’s gaze squarely. “It’s just that, sometimes you want to pull closer to people, even when you know you shouldn’t. Because, in your heart, you can’t help but hope for a response.”

Mo has no idea how the hell to begin processing all… that, but the ruthless honesty, such a rarity from He Tian, cleaves deeper than anything else he might have said or done. Which is fair, Mo had known He Tian would hit back. He just hadn't expected it to be like this. Though, can it really be considered that when the weapon used is your own vulnerability? 

Mo’s still clinging to his anger, and he stomps over to the door, yanking it open. 

He’s half out the door when he stops and looks back over his shoulder. “The next time you wanna get yourself killed,” he says, “Do it on someone else’s fuck’n watch.” And slams the door behind him. 

***

This fucker’s got some crazy notion that there’s something going on besides an employee-client relationship, and as much as it stings to admit, He Tian isn’t the only one to blame. Mo’s gotten complacent about keeping He Tian at a professional distance.

He needs to set clear limits. He needs to stay vigilant.

He knows too well the trap of trust. This is a business transaction, and he can’t let it be anything more. 

It’s a weakness he can’t afford. Not again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((oh man, ch 340? I was just like: annnnd there's that unmanaged BPD right hur))


	5. xi. fallout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He Tian is a terrible patient. Mo is constantly mad but refuses to rage-quit. Jian Yi can't leave well enough alone, and Zhan Xi is an annoyingly excellent friend, feat. Business Mode He Cheng.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no post. I had killer writers block- still do actually. This was also supposed to include two more chapter/snapshot things, but I just keep going over this section over and over and over again. So I decided to just say eff-it and post the thing so I can MOVE ON, PLZ  
> Another reason it took a while, I had someone comment (yes I read all the comments, I'm just /really/ behind on replying...) on how HT & Mo's relationship bonces around from 0-100 a lot and I was like YOU ARE SO RIGHT.   
> I mean, there's supposed to be big time gaps between a lot of what's happening, but I decided I wanted to try dragging out this particular fight. This is not easy for me it turns out. I'm like Zhan Xi- I take a few moments (or more than a few) to myself, come back with a clearer head, explain why I'm mad/what I'm sorry for, and then... kinda move on? IDK, maybe because my social skills are Not Great, and I'm just blunt AF, but who's to say?
> 
> ANYWAYS  
> I have given up on pretending I know how long this story is going to be. We're past the halfway mark, that's all I can say for sure rn.

* * *

xi. fallout

Having been raised by a nurse, Mo Enforced Care is like living under authoritarian rule –Jian Yi's words, not his– but it leaves He Tian unable to do all that much as his brain heals. It has no impact on He Tian's ability to be a total douchenozzle of course, and Mo's not about to fucking coddle him. Mostly he treats Mo with a sort of cold dismissal. Now that he thinks about it, it's kind of like how He Tian treats his brother. It's a disquieting thought, and the idea rankles for some reason- one Mo doesn’t investigate.

Regardless, Mo needs a fucking break, so at the first available opportunity to escape playing nurse for his brain bruised client, he seeks refuge in Zhan Xi's apartment for some peace. Much needed peace

His friendship with Zhan Xi back in school had been awkward as all hell. Neither of them are talkers, and while Zhan Xi isn't put off by Mo's prickly demeanor, they hadn't had much in common back then. 

They've come a long ways from that. It's a friendship that has matured in their adult life, growing strong without the middleman Jian Yi involved. There’s plenty of contributing factors, but perhaps the most notable is a mutual understanding that sometimes the best way to hangout is to do nothing more than exist in the same space. A bubble of calm, companionable quiet that's a chance to be social, without the emotional energy of _being_ social. 

That’s exactly what he needs right now. He doesn’t have to say it either, Zhan Xi just knows. Mo gets to spend the afternoon mindlessly playing some fighter video game while Zhan Xi works on a paper or thesis or whatever for school. The hours of quiet are only broken by the game, volume set on low, and the rhythmic click-clack of typing as a backdrop of white noise. 

At least until Jian Yi crashes the companionable silence by way of existing in the same air space. 

He declares his entry –loudly, because the guy has no other setting– exclaims at Mo's presence, and goes clomping around the place like a fucking elephant instead of some twiggy little pseudo-twink. He keeps up chattering nonstop all the while. Other than his initial enthusiastic greeting, he thankfully aims most of his jabbering at Zhan Xi, and Mo can block out the noise. Up until– 

"Sooooo~"

Mo suppresses his auto-flinch response at Jian Yi's tone. He knows that tone. He _hates_ that tone. "Don't,” he warns. He doesn't know why he bothers, because Jian Yi ignores it. He always fucking does. 

"I hear you did an explode at He Tian."

Mo turns to squint-scowl suspiciously at his friend, who plops unceremoniously next to him on the couch. 

"How the hell would you even know that?"

"I have my ways," says Jian Yi batting his eyelashes innocently.

"He was unusually reticent when we visited," Zhan Xi says; because he's a reasonable human being. He also seems to have given up on getting any school work accomplished and comes over to sit in the armchair catty corner to them. "And despite his concussion, Jian Yi was Jian Yi about it."

Translation: he's a nosy busybody, free of things like a brain-to-mouth filter, and a stubborn streak that surpasses Mo's own. 

"Not that he said much," Zhan Xi amends. "Just that you guys argued."

“Because he’s just as emotionally crippled as you,” Jian Yi stage whispers. 

"Oh fuck off, Jian Yi," Mo snarls. "Maybe he's being a crank because he almost got kidnapped-slash-assassinated and bashed in the head. Ever consider that, huh?"

"There’s this special brand of gloomy he gets when he’s upset about interpersonal relationships," says Zhan Xi.

Mo glares daggers at his friend with a hard scowl. "Keep your diploma in your pants Dr. Zhan.”

"I don't actually have my doctorate yet." He says it with the smallest of amused smiles, which is just… ugh.

Mo throws his hands up in exasperation and makes a giving up sound. "Alright! So we had a fight, fuck! What's it to you?"

“What landmine did he manage to step on?” Jian Yi asks.

Mo switches to glaring daggers at the nosy fuck, and kicks him in the shin for good measure. “He stepped on the ‘keep your nose out of my business’ landmine.” 

It’s partially truthful, but mostly a warning for Jian Yi to stop prying, who's smart enough, or well versed enough, to catch on. 

It doesn't stop him from pouting like the man-baby he is. "You two keep so many secrets," he complains.

“Why's a fucko like you trying to get involved anyways?" Mo demands instead of arguing that ridiculous idea.

“Why am I getting involved?” Jian Yi echoes back, sounding affronted and serious for once. "How about: _moral support_?"

Mo looks at Zhan Xi for backup, but the rueful look he gets in response tells Mo he's on his own here. Zhan Xi knows to pick his battles when it comes to his boyfriend, and this isn't one of them. 

Again, Mo doesn't know why he bothers.

***

The old banter between Mo and He Tian, the tease and rebuke routine, has given way to something more alike to the early months of their cohabitation. He Tian is perhaps a bit more chilly, less prone to half-molesting Mo. 

For his part, Mo’s less openly hostile, like he usually treats clients. Curt, short exchanges that give He Tian little to react to. Patching the glitch response to He Tian’s presence, the one that had him snapping back instead of doing the smart thing. Made him incapable of doing what he knew he should do; terminate the conversation, and follow up with a quick and clean get away. 

In hindsight, it’s blatantly obvious he and his client were getting too comfortable, lulled into a false sense of familiarity. A dangerous mistake, so this renewed antagonism is good.

And yet... 

***

The empty cartons of mediocre takeout crowd the rooms small coffee table, empty beer bottles strewn among the carnage of dinner. Jian Yi’s sprawled across the couch, hands resting on his very full stomach, and his feet resting in Zhan Xi’s lap. Mo's vaguely aware of the two watching him with slight fascination as he paces back and forth. 

It’s possible, bordering on probable, that Mo is maybe-kinda-sorta drunk.

He blames Jian Yi. Because one of the inalienable rules of the universe states that if Jian Yi wants something bad enough he’ll damn well make it happen. It just so happens that the little shit’s absolutely set on Mo spilling the tea. An act only attainable by getting him spectacularly shitfaced. 

“Do you have any idea how infuriating this motherfucker is?” He demands; keeps pacing.

He’s not even sure _how_ Jian Yi got them on the subject.

No, that’s not entirely true. Jian Yi regaled them with a tale of a teenage He Tian and himself getting into trouble. One ending with Qiu bailing them out of jail. Zhan Xi had been so aggrieved it actually showed on his face, the antics described so absurdly _them_ it had Mo snickering. 

That’s probably the reason why Mo hadn’t immediately shut down a conversation with complaints of not escaping that guy only to be stuck suffering through conversations about him. What he can’t recall is how that had turned into this: him ranting. 

Even drunk, his inhibitions aren’t so relaxed that he's about to tell the reason for the fight– He Tian risking his own skin for Mo. All that alcohol can pry out of him is different variations on how absolutely, goddamn _pissed_ he is about the ambivalent response to Mo ‘doing an explode’. 

“I hit the fuck’n self-destruct button. I used all the powers of psychoanalysis my mum could realize in me, pinpointed his ultimate weaknesses, and pulled the trigger. Boom, K.O., crit shot.” Mo gestures wildly, forgetting the beer in his hand, and sending some of it sloshing to the ground unnoticed. “I mean, yeah, it’s put a strain on our… dealings,” he falters on the word _relationship_ , because he absolutely has no description for their complicated power dynamic. “It’s gone back to like it was before. All evil taunts and cunning and, like, trying to run me off or whatever. And okay, yeah, he’s been extra strong on the shitty personality, but he’s not like–” Mo stops pacing abruptly and makes grabby hands in front of himself, angrily milking an imaginary cow in an effort to vent his frustrations enough to form semi-coherent sentences. To adequately explain through the haze of alcohol anger that He Tian is reacting incorrectly. 

He doesn’t throw insults or punches. He doesn’t stop taking his meds or drive the car headlong into a brick wall. He should have flipped from treating Mo like he’s a paragon of all things good in the world, a thing worth dying to protect, to acting like Mo’s the source of all evil. Yes, He Tian’s icing him out, but _that’s it._

It's frankly disturbing to see He Tian acting like his brain isn't wired to implode at even the smallest of perceived criticisms and the passing thought of abandonment. The way he'd slammed the door on He Tian should’ve pushed him to rage. A violence that could be pointed outward at the world, or inward toward himself. 

But it hasn't. 

It’s not normal. At least, as far as someone can consider something ‘normal’ when it comes to the typical reactions of an atypical brain. “It’s wrong. For him. He shouldn’t be able to just... _not_ ,” he finishes lamely.

“Well, nothing can hurt you if you never cared in the first place,” Zhan Xi says thoughtfully, staring at where he’s continually rotating his own beer bottle, thoughtful, considering it. “At least that’s probably how he sees it. Not caring means not feeling, and not feeling keeps him dislocated, which in turn allows him some ability to temper his reactions. He Tian is nothing if not self disciplined.” He makes a face. “I’m not even sure self discipline is a strong enough word.”

"Compulsive control freak?" Jian Yi offers.

“You don’t just get to _choose_ what you feel,” says Mo, annoyed that he has to point it out to someone like Zhan Xi. Hell, annoyed that anyone with any ability to tolerate Mo in general isn’t already vividly aware of it. 

If you got to choose how you felt then Mo wouldn’t _be_ this way. It isn’t like he enjoys being an angry piece of shit 24-fucking-seven. It’s tiring being angry all the time. Then you end up being angry that you’re angry, then being angry when other people don’t understand you can’t not be angry, then being angry about– well, everything and everyone and your entire existence, and it’s just goddamn exhausting. So no, emotions aren’t a choice, fuck you very much. 

“Not feeling is kind of his whole family’s thing,” points out Jian Yi. “I mean, He Cheng’s pretty frigid, but their dad?” Jian Yi shivers and grimaces. “He’s a downright friendly dude compared to their old man. Doesn’t take any special shrink knowledge to see how that might’ve fucked He Tian right up.”

Mo doesn't bother lingering on what could've trauma-ed He Tian's emotional dysregulation into submission. There's the more appealing option of insulting Jian Yi after all. “What kind of horseshit idea is that? Emotion don’t come with a fucking off switch!"

“If you pretend hard enough and long enough, the mind can pretty much convince itself of anything.” Zhan Xi gives him a look, “I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept.” 

Mo doesn’t flinch at the accusation, but it’s a near thing. Instead, he rounds on his friend, calling on his anger to scab over the guilt and frustration. It’s a horrible idea, but he’s drunk and feeling attacked by one of the few people whose opinions he gives a shit about. He can’t help it. Can’t stop being angry any more than he can stop breathing. That’s the entire fucking point. 

“Fuck you, Zhan,” he spits out. “I’m not one of your patients.” 

Zhan Xi frowns. “I didn’t mean–” he starts to say but Mo talks over him, yells, really. “And that’s pretty hypocritical coming from you, when you still pretend that Jian Yi–” 

“Yelling isn’t going to make you feel any better,” Zhan Xi retaliates with infuriating calmness. “You know that.”

He’s always so level headed, it drives Mo fucking crazy. His brain can’t process anything other than how goddamn calm the guy is and how offensive his disregard feels. He doesn’t register what the tension Zhan Xi holds in his shoulder might mean, or the way his hands are white knuckled where they grip the beer bottle, and that one of his legs is bouncing nervously.

Before Mo can get worked up far enough to ‘do an explode’, Jian Yi does what he does best: act like a dramatic idiot.

“Not that I don’t love watching Mo get all aggro, but I really need to pee," he announces to the room at large.

“You know where the bathroom is, fucko.” Mo snaps.

Jian Yi looks sheepish. “I’m not sure I can walk that far without falling over," he admits.

Zhan Xi looks skyward and sighs loudly before getting up and heaving his boyfriend to his wobbly feet.

“How much did you drink?” he hears Zhan Xi ask and Jian Yi’s reply of “I dunno, enough?” echo down the hall.

While Zhan Xi helps Jian Yi first to the bathroom, then goes to tuck him into bed, Mo tries to sneak out, already feeling guilt set in. Too bad Zhan Xi knows how he operates and employs his special brand of witchcraft to make sure he's there to bar Mo's retreat.

His friend shoves a pillow and a blanket into his hands. "You're staying the night, Guanshan." He says it in that steely tone that brokers no room for dissent. "I know you're pissed. If you want to yell at me fine, go off, but you sleep here. Non-negotiable."

"I'm not pissed." Mo snaps. Zhan Xi gives him a look. "Okay, fine. I'm mad.” Mo shifts, awkward and feeling like he’s expected to say more. “Not really at you. Mostly just kinda annoyed with you."

"Feeling's mutual,” Zhan Xi replies easily, and then like nothing happened; “You gonna stick around for breakfast?"

"Can't. Gotta get the asshole to an early meeting."

"I don't envy you,” Zhan Xi replies with a hint of mirth, leaning back against the front door. 

"Yeah, well, at least he's a temporary nuisance. You're doomed to a lifetime of that fucko boyfriend of yours."

"Love does crazy things– like make someone's awful habits somehow both aggravating yet endearing."

"How the fuck does that work?"

"I live in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance."

Mo snorts, trying to cover his slight amusement. "Whatever, I'm going to bed."

"Drink some water first." Zhan Xi reminds Mo while heading for his own room.

Mo dumps the blanket and pillow on the living room's couch before flopping on top of them. "Fuck off, mom!"

***

It’s really hard to stay mad with Zhan Xi. 

It doesn’t help how quickly Zhan Xi let's shit go either. It’s a trait Mo both hates, envy's, and appreciates. Yet it’s this easy turn-around time between Zhan Xi and himself that’s possibly the strongest root supporting their friendship. 

Mo gets angry, Zhan Xi makes him admit it, they move on.

The guy can't manage the same with his own goddamn boyfriend, so who the fuck knows why it works when it's them. Perhaps it’s that, despite everything between the Jian Yi and Zhan Xi, they don’t share a compatible wavelength in this one regard. 

A wavelength that Zhan Xi and Mo apparently do share. 

***

Mo walks into the penthouse the next morning with a vicious hangover, cursing alcohol, his impulse control, and Jian Yi all the while– mostly Jian Yi. He's going to need to come up with some sort of not-half-assed apology for Zhan Xi too. But first; revenge. 

And water.

He stomps into the kitchen, wrapped up in plotting, and fails to notice straight off that he’s not alone. “Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.” 

He Tian’s sudden comment and appearance is like a lightning strike. Mo swears to god, it almost sends him into cardiac arrest. 

He whips around to snarl at He Tian –no doubt something out of proportion with the situation– except any rude response dies out in favor of him starting stupid and open mouthed at He Tian, who’s leaning against the counter, fucking shirtless of course. At least he’s wearing pants. The shirtless ness is distracting, but the problem here.

Heathen that he is, the man’s eating a goddamn poptart, a cup of coffee in hand. He’d gained permission to use the coffee machine without supervision a few months ago, so that’s not the issue either.

The issue is the shallow gash down one cheek. Nothing bad, but the healing scab stands prominent, marring the otherwise annoyingly flawless face. There’s bruising on his forearms too. The kind you get from blocking heavy blows. 

For fucks sake, Mo’s been gone less than twenty four hours. What the hell kind of trouble could He Tian manage to get up to so fast?

"Are you hungover?" He Tian asks curiously, giving him a once over. 

“What the fuck! Why are you– !" Mo gestures wildly in He Tian's general direction, then again, "What the fuck!"

After taking an unnecessarily long sip of coffee and giving Mo an immensely unimpressed look over the rim of his cup, he finally dains to answer. “I didn’t think you’d be back so early, so I didn’t put a shirt on. I didn't intend on offending your maidenly sensibilities. Not so early in the day anyways. Partial nudity is really more of an evening activity, wouldn't you agree? Though I could be swayed towards late afternoon, given a decent argument."

“Not that, you tool! Your face!" He points more emphatically, and He Tian touches his cheek, like he’d forgotten the injury entirely. 

“Oh, that.” He waves a dismissive hand and blithely shoves the rest of the poptart in his mouth. Pretending he’s not an elitist dick, he says “ish nofin,” through his mouthful, like he was raised in a goddamn barn. 

Seriously? He actually thinks Mo will believe 'it’s nothing' and let it go. Yeah fucking right. 

“Bullshit it's nothing.” He points at He Tian _again_ , more like stabbing than gesturing this time. “What about your fucking arms? That nothin’ too?”

He Tian finishes chewing and checks. This time he has the decency to grimace at the damage. “More colorful than I expected,” he comments, poking experimentally at the worst of the bruising.

Mo finds himself halfway across the kitchen, in front of He Tian to slap the prodding hand away. When did that happen?

“Don’t just poke at it, chickendick!”

He Tian rolls his eyes. “Chill Momo, it’s not a big deal.”

Mo has to take a moment for the words 'not a big deal' to stop reverberating incessantly in his skull. 

He presses the base of his palms into his temples, trying to physically contain his outrage. It sort of works. He doesn't start yelling at least; and is eventually able to grit out, “What. Happened.”

He Tian raises a perfect eyebrow in that really condescending way he excels at. “You said that if I was going to get myself killed, not to do it on your watch.”

This time, Mo has to take _all_ of the moments. Has to screw his eyes shut and yank at his hair, hoping the edge of pain can cut through his anger. He cannot lose his temper _twice_ in less than twenty four hours. It’s not allowed.

But this fucking sonuvabitch. Mo takes back everything he said last night. This man has no fucking chill– or maybe it’s the opposite. Too much chill. Because He Tian’s antagonism lacks heat. This anger is frostbite. It’s sub zero temperatures and hypothermia.

It’s also a distraction. An attempt to pick a fight to avoid the question. He’s always pulling this move, isn’t he? Mo's never really noticed before.

“You weren’t trying to get yourself killed, asshole,” he snaps once he’s sure he won’t start flipping metaphorical or literal tables. “If you were, you wouldn’t be shirtless in the kitchen, drinking over sugared coffee. You’d be in the fucking ICU.”

“Oh, you think so?” 

“Yes.” Mo spits the word like a curse, hands fisted. “Because it’s either absolute zero or 150% with you.”

He Tian’s resulting laughter grates on his nerves like Mo can’t even _describe_. Maybe because it lacks anything resembling real humor. More likely, it’s because Mo reckons the next words out the guy’s smug mouth are going to be even more fucking aggravating than the rest of this conversation has been.

He wishes he was wrong, but He Tian coos, “You know me so well, Momo,” and it’s so obnoxiously familiar, yet it sound foreign coming from He Tian like this– flippant and scathing. A glib backhand replacing the old sly teasing. The stark difference hits harder than if He Tian had actually punched him. 

Words have always managed to slice him deeper than any knife. The sight of the scars he carries from She Li make him flinch away, not in memory of the pain, but of the words hissed in his ears. Cold, callous truths that reach far deeper than skin and blood, tearing Mo’s fears from inside his chest and feeding them back to him.

He reckons that’s why his first instinct is to recoil; but then he remembers– this is He Tian. This chickendick's weapon of choice is a bad attitude and an ego that deserves its own postal code. There’s not going to be fists and feet and knives. 

Will there be verbal jabs? Almost certainly. Yet while He Tian likes playing at being The Big Bad, he’s all bark and little bite, and most of that bite he saves for the mats. Or it’s the literal kind, because He Tian is a freak like that.

And for all that He Tian’s trying to be a dick about it, it doesn’t change the truth– Mo knows this asshole. He knows the lengths He Tian will go to, but also where he draws the line. So instead of being cowed, he glares up at the other man. “I’ve been stuck with you for over a year. S’not like I have any _choice_ but to know you.”

That seems to amuse He Tian, but his reply still carries the same underlying scorn, “Is that so? What’s my favorite color or food, hmm? When I was a kid, what did I want to be when I grew up?”

Mo rolls his eyes. “I might not know stupid little thing–” _like how beef stew is your favorite_ , Mo thinks, _that your favorite animal is a golden retriever, that blue’s your favorite color, but a blue so pale it’s almost grey._ “– but I know _you_ ,” he jabbed a finger into He Tian’s chest, “despite all your intolerable nonsense. I just don’t say shit-all about it, since the last time I did you threatened to _sew my mouth shut_.”

“Maybe it’s time you quit then," He Tian says with a careless shrug and a sip of his coffee. "Since I’m so intolerable.”

Just like that, He Tian has thrown the gauntlet. The war of Make Mo Quit: Round Two has begun. This is a battle he knows how to win, and Mo's jagged anger gives way to affronted annoyance in the face of this boldfaced dare. He Tian coming in wielding passive-aggression in one hand, a shield of haughty disregard in the other. Unconsciously, he finds himself squaring his shoulders in preparation for another battle of wills, ready to take up arms against the enemy with razored hostility, and armored in persistent defiance. 

This is familiar ground, not the unsteady terrain of the past weeks, and he’s burning with the anticipation of meeting the challenge.

“Try me He Tian, go ahead and _try me_ ,” he says, almost dares him. “I’m _so_ looking forward to another punctured lung, or asphyxiating on my own blood. It’s always such a _good_ time.”

“Ouch. You insult me, Momo. Assuming I haven’t figured you out too.” He Tian’s eyes glint in the morning light, dangerous and provocative. “I’m not so ignorant as to rehash failed tactics, and you obviously care about your own life almost as little as I do my own.” 

Mo gives a derisive snort. “Oh boohoo, like I give a fuck.” He pulls out his phone to check the time, not that he really needs to, more to nettle He Tian with not being the center of attention. “You’ve got a meeting to get ready for, and I’ve got better things to do then listen to your bullshit,” he says dismissively, “so get to the point, if you even have one.” 

He Tian steps in closer, getting in Mo’s face, and says in a voice barely above a whisper, “You’re scared of me. You hide it well, but you are.”

He is absolutely _not_ scared of He Tian, not anymore. Warry, maybe, or cautious might be a better word for it. And yet… 

“Like I’d be afraid of a chickendick like you,” he scoffs, even as the undercurrent of He Tian’s accusation raises the hairs on the back of his neck, makes him tense up– because He Tian’s not entirely wrong either. 

Mo fears the fragments of his psyche that He Tian unintentionally drags to the surface. Pieces that, in ignorance, He Tian might break. Pieces of himself Mo can’t afford to have broken. 

Yes, Mo is afraid. But of himself.

The thoughts race through his mind in less than a blink of an eye, but 150% of He Tian’s attention is focused in on him, and the man wasn’t bluffing when he claimed to know Mo too. Only, maybe He Tian _did_ blink, because he continues with the villainous ranting. More likely he’s simply blinded by his ego again. 

“You’re not as hard to read as you think, Mo Guan Shan. You don’t fear the darkness, maybe. But there’s something in me that scares you,” he murmurs in a voice of dark velvet and sinister softness. His eyes heavy lidded as he runs a finger along Mo’s jaw, the light touch somehow aggressive instead of sensual. “I get closer to figuring it out everyday. And when I do, I’ll have you running. Scowl all you want. It doesn’t fool me, sweetheart.”

“Are you auditioning for a role as a Disney bad guy.” Mo rolls his eyes –part exasperation, part bravado, but absolutely all scowl– swatting away the hand He Tian’s still tracing his jawline with. “Or is it a supervillain role? ‘Cause you’ve got the whole evil monologuing thing down.” 

Of course He Tian replies without missing a beat, never at a loss for words. “Definitely a Disney film. I’m too handsome for villainy, unless it comes with a redemption arch.” This time, when He Tian grins, it lacks the malice that’s pervaded most of this conversation. Even that heinous twinkle of mischief in his eyes is making a comeback. “And you’d make a very fetching princess.”

With a growl, he shoves his smug client none too gently. As he stomps off he shouts back over his shoulder, “Go get dressed. We’re leaving in half an hour.”

A spark of something –emerging from his recall, born of a new realization or instinctual reaction, he can’t be sure– has Mo pausing right before disappearing out the door (and if he reveals a little too much in how this mirrors his exit from He Tian’s hospital room, well, maybe the years of Jian Yi’s sense of drama are starting to show). 

“You say I’m afraid of you, but have you ever considered the alternative?”

“And what alternative is that?” He Tian sounds amused. 

Mo looks back. He Tian’s leaning against the counter again, looking untouchable. Perfect, as if he’s been lovingly carved from the same marble as the countertops. Lethal in his flawlessness, exuding bulletproof confidence. 

Mo wonders how much of it is a lie. If those lies are trying to fool Mo, or if He Tian tells them to fool himself.

“That maybe it’s you who’s afraid of me,” Mo offers.

He Tian grins at him. It’s not a nice grin, all shark teeth and sinister intent. “All the time.”

Mo marches out with some cursory grumbling. He’s got enough of a headache from his hangover, but he’s pretty sure he’d have no idea what _that’s_ supposed to mean, even if his mind was functioning at peak performance. 

***

Mo’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop– but this isn’t what he expected. 

It’s an oversight on his part really. He’s seen He Tian angry before after all, how it turns him to ice. Reminds him of what Jian Yi said just last night. That despite it all, how very alike He Tian really is to his brother. And while Mo is right too –you can’t choose how you feel– he’d forgotten another important fact.

You _can_ choose how you react. 

***

Mo’s stuck sitting in the waiting area outside the conference room with two others. They’re not familiar, but they might as well have Personal Security emblazoned across their foreheads. The two chat quietly, but they leave Mo alone. Thank god. 

Waiting out here for He Tian's meeting to wrap up is pretty dull really, but after being stuck with a pissy He Tian day in and day out... Mo will take the mind numbing boredom, thank you very much. 

And He Tian’s defiantly pissy day. Mo reckons there’s something more bothering his client beyond losing their most recent clash of wills last night, but he's yet to ferret out the cause yet. 

The elevator chimes and Mo looks up with a frown, hand instinctively searching out where he’s tucked his piece out of sight. Everyone who’s supposed to be at the meeting is accounted for, and there’s only five or ten minutes left of it, so who...?

The doors slide open and He Cheng steps out, immaculate as ever, Qiu a half step in his wake.

The two other guards belatedly tense up (ammeters, Mo thinks with disgust), and their conversation comes to an abrupt end. Sensing He Cheng's presence, the pair stand and bow. Mo doesn’t blame them for it, he understands the impulse. He’s not entirely immune to it either, the way He Cheng’s simple presence in the room commands awareness. A stranger could wander in and they’d still stop and take notice. It’s like he sucks all the light out of a room and into himself. A blackhole consuming color and light and attention– and just as dangerous. This is He Cheng doing business, an entirely different species than the iceberg of a brother Mo’s more familiar with. 

“Sir?” One of the subordinates asks, doing a poor job of covering nervousness. 

“I’m just here to speak with my brother,” he assures the pair. 

Those hard eyes flick to Mo, who’s still sitting, albeit no longer slumped in the chair or broadcasting his bad temper to all present. Maybe that’s still kind of rude. This guy’s both his boss _and_ a mob boss after all. He stands as well and gives the slightest bow, which seems to placate He Cheng well enough. 

“The meeting should be over in–” one of the men starts telling He Cheng right as the conference room doors open. A few men spill out, filling the space with insincere chat, tittering laughter, and a little ass-kissing. He Tian’s chumming it up too. His bad mood swapped out for casual friendliness. Of course he’s smiling that broad, charming smile all the while. Not the boyishly charming one he turns on his admirers that makes people light up when it’s turned their way. It’s more an easy confidence, a little aloof. There’s something in the way he holds himself that tells others that, despite his age, he knows he’s above them all. An interested audience member watching a particularly good movie.

Mo’s willing to bet a month’s wage that it’s a complete fucking sham. Of course, no one in the room besides Mo, He Cheng, and Qiu know it. He Tian ends up confirming Mo’s theory when he catches sight of his older brother and the expression evaporates almost instantly into what Mo can only thing of as Bratty-Lil-Bro mode. 

He slap his business mask back in place just as fast as quickly. “Cheng-ge, to what do we owe the pleasure?” He asks it politely, and the question seems harmless enough if you didn’t know better.

Just as falsely cordial, He Cheng answers, “Nothing special, there’s just a matter I’d like to briefly speak to you about.” There’s a very eloquent pause before he adds, “If you have a moment, of course.” 

Which is how Mo knows this day is going to turn from a bad day to total shitshow. 

He Cheng’s true to his word at least. The conversation only has Mo waiting outside the door a few minutes. There haven’t been any raised voices, but this is the He brothers. They have strange conversations-slash-arguments through eye contact and micro expressions, or, who knows, maybe telepathy runs in their family

…actually, now that he’s thinking about it, that’d explain the whole intense staring thing. It’d explain _a lot_ of things honestly.

Possible He family telepathy theories aside, Mo isn’t a mind reader. He doesn’t have to be. He was fully aware that He Tian will leave that meeting room in a seriously bad mood. He doesn’t need to read minds to clue into just how far beyond bad mood He Tian’s in when he comes out. He’s not just butt-hurt, or cranky, or pissed off– but legit seething. The kind where if it was Mo's anger, he’d be screaming and throwing things and probably frothing at the mouth. The kind of Tian Tantrum level where he threatens to get out the sewing needles and steel wire.

It’s gone in a heartbeat, replaced by schmoozing as He Tian makes his escape. His pace is not too fast, but not slowly either as he makes his way over to the relative sanctuary of the elevator. He Tian stops occasionally to say his goodbyes to the few men still hovering idly; flies on the wall, looking to catch a hint as to what could manage to get the two brothers in the same room without resulting in light-to-moderate bloodshed. He Tian does all of this without exchanging a word or a glance with Mo. And though it grates on him, Mo acts like a good little lackey, following the mandated half step behind with silent obedience. 

The elevator opens with a pleasant ‘ding’, and when the doors slide closed, almost without a sound, it leaves just the two of them alone. 

He Tian’s smile doesn’t falter. 

Mo’s simultaneously impressed, yet freaked out by that. Despite his seeming composure, detonation is imminent. In his head, Mo starts a mental countdown.

_One, two, three, four–_ The elevator smoothly starts descending, so well balanced he can barely tell.

_Five, six, seven, eight–_ He Tian turns and his fist connects with the wall hard enough to make the elevator rattle. 

“Fuck!” He punches the wall once, twice more for good measure. There’s definitely a dent starting to form now. 

Mo does his best to become one with the elevator's hideous wallpaper. Not because he’s affrighted by the outburst, but because Mo _knows_. There's a need to let go in a way you really only can manage in private. No matter how irritating the fucker is, Mo can’t find it in himself to begrudge He Tian a moment of (relatively) private release. 

Mo also knows from experience that punching walls isn’t as great an outlet for anger as it looks. But who knows, maybe it works for He Tian. Only, it doesn’t apparently, because He Tian gives up on the punching. Instead, he closed his eyes and forced his breathing to a steady, calm rhythm. He presses his forehead against the same wall he’d introduced to his first. He does something with his hands that Mo can’t quite make out, presumably a grounding technique. It’s only when He Tian starts repeatedly thunking his head against the wall that Mo intervenes, sliding his palm between the wall and his client's skull. 

He Tian turns his head the slightest bit, just enough to give Mo a questioning look with that same annoying eyebrow of condescension. “Concussion,” Mo reminds him. He Tian scoffs wordlessly, but he does straighten back up– spine almost ramrod straight actually. Neither of them say another word. 

By the time they step out into the lobby He Tian has his smiling mask back, though the normal clickity-clack of his fancy shoes on the fancy floor is missing– because he’s not strutting, Mo realizes. It’s that predatory glide he occasionally adopts, the one that never fails to remind Mo of a panther and never means anything good.

The parking garage is empty of any other signs or sounds of life when they reach its depths, but He Tian’s only concession is to swap out the smiling mask for the-bland-face-of-disinterest. He gets in the back seat without Mo even needing to say anything and somehow manages to close the car door behind him noiselessly. 

***

“My father has asked that I come visit him this weekend,” He Tian explains when Mo corners him. It’s the first sound He Tian has made since the elevator, or so it feels like. 

“I see.” Mo doesn't see, but he can make a few educated guesses. None of them are particularly nice. “Hong Kong or Beijing?”

“Hong Kong. Pick up is arranged for Friday evening. I should be back sometime Monday afternoon. He Cheng will send you the details.”

“Should I plan on you being around for dinner on Friday?”

“Probably not.”

“Wait…” There’s a nagging sensation in the back of Mo’s mind, “Are you flying?” 

“Yeah.”

Mo frowns. “Did the doctor clear you for that?”

“No, but he didn’t say not to either.”

“And your brother’s okay with that?” 

“He doesn’t care.” Mo has a hard time believing that –man's got a serious brother complex– but he keeps that to himself. “And even if he did have an objection, you don’t just say no to someone like my father.”

Well that's a can of worms if Mo’s ever heard one. A can he’s got no interest in opening.

"The hell is so important he can't wait a week for your brain to heal?" he asks instead.

"Didn't say.” 

Everything about He Tian's short replies warn Mo to back off. The way he’s keeping himself busy with packing. He even folds his damn clothes before packing them in the suitcase; a skillset Mo had here-to-for thought him incapable of. 

Idiot should know better than to expect anything other than unrelenting persistence when it involves Mo’s protective duties though, and the brush off only leaves him feeling extra obsonite. “More important than possibly rendering you brain dead?"

"I don't see why it matters to you. You get two and half days off.” He Tian doesn't bother to look at Mo as he talks, as if more interested in folding his socks– _folding fucking socks._ “And if I do end up a vegetable, then guarding me will be that much easier. Jian Yi might say you've made good on your promise, and you can be done with me for good." 

So maybe it’s Mo who’s the idiot; poking a sleeping panther with a stick, seconds away from having his hand bitten off and not realizing it.

In another life, he would've asked He Tian how he knew that promise was to Jian Yi. 

There's a universe where he makes the sensible choice of exiting this conversation instead of taking He Tian's bait. There exists a world where Mo takes a step back and realizes that He Tian's projecting his anger onto the most convenient target. Perhaps there’s even a place where Mo uses his –not insignificant– amount of knowledge to deescalate the situation.

In this here; in this now; he just ends up yelling. 

"It _matters_ because it's the decent fucking thing to do!" Mo snaps out with brutal intent. "Yeah, you're just my current contractual obligation, but you could be a stranger on the street and I'd still give a damn! It's this great new thing called _basic human decency_. You should try it sometime!"

The pitying look He Tian gives him in return is somehow more insulting than anything else he's said to Mo in… maybe ever. "This is the mafia, darling. If basic human decency is what you're looking for, best try elsewhere." 

The subsequent look Mo gives him is blistering. Honestly, he hates this jaded veneer He Tian’s dressed in _more_ than the flirtatious, overly-familiar nonsense. 

It’s such a bullshit thing to say too. That just because everyone else is shitty it justifies being equally shitty. It’s so irritating in fact, that Mo can’t even find the words to properly express it, let alone in an eloquent way that He Tian won’t immediately turn back on him. Fucker always insists on having the last word.

That’s fine though, Mo thinks furiously, he’s always been more a man of action anyways. If He Tian wants to have the last word, then he can fucking have it.

The way those arched brows shoot up when Mo spits on the floor and walks out– well, Mo feels pretty confident he’s the one to come out on top. If only his win would make He Tian less of a pain, Mo’s life would be significantly easier. 

Big nope. 

The days leading up to He Tian’s ill-advised departure are one long suffering of erratic swaps between the three bad moods. Sometimes two at the same time, but never all three at once. Mo wishes it was just all three at once, because at least he’d know what to expect.

But wait! There’s more! Buy three bad moods and one family visit, and get a Gloomy He Tian Intensifying free of charge! 

The night He Tian leaves, Mo goes out and gets _very_ drunk. Not with Jian Yi, because Mo still hasn’t totally forgiven him for last time. Nor with Zhan Xi, because he’d give him judgy looks. Both of them would’ve intervened before Mo could get into a barroom brawl with some brawny shithead who finds Mo’s face insulting or something. 

Mo honestly doesn’t care what the guy’s issue was. Hell, he almost wants to thank the asshole, because that fight's the highlight of his whole fucking month.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no more writers block, No More Writers Block, NoMoreWritersBlock, NOMOREWRITERSBLOCK  
> (plz)


End file.
